Green Employment and the Green Economy

Earth Policy News - A Warming World Means More Destructive Storms

2009-06-09T09:07:00.001-07:00

Earth Policy Institute
Plan B 3.0 Book Byte
June 9, 2009

A WARMING WORLD MEANS MORE DESTRUCTIVE STORMS

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/Seg/PB3ch03_ss6.htm

Lester R. Brown

Elevated global temperatures bring a number of threats, including rising
seas and more crop-withering heat waves. Higher surface water temperatures
in the tropical oceans also provide more energy to drive tropical storm
systems, leading to more-destructive hurricanes and typhoons. The
combination of rising seas, more powerful storms, and stronger storm surges
can be devastating.

Just how devastating this combination can be became evident in late August
2005, when Hurricane Katrina came onshore on the U.S. Gulf Coast near New
Orleans. In some Gulf Coast towns, Katrina's powerful 28-foot-high storm
surge did not leave a single structure standing. New Orleans survived the
initial hit but was flooded when the inland levees were breached and water
covered everything in large parts of the city except for the rooftops, where
thousands of people were stranded. Even in August 2006, a year after the
storm had passed, the most damaged areas of the city remained without water,
power, sewage disposal, garbage collection, or telecommunications.

With advance warning of the storm and official urging to evacuate coastal
areas, 1 million or so evacuees fled northward into Louisiana or to
neighboring states of Texas and Arkansas. Of this total, more than 200,000
have not yet returned home and will likely never do so. These storm evacuees
are the world's first large wave of climate refugees.

Katrina was the most financially destructive hurricane ever to make landfall
anywhere. It was one of eight hurricanes that hit the southeastern United
States in 2004 and 2005. As a result of the unprecedented damage, insurance
premiums have doubled, tripled, and even in some especially vulnerable
situations gone up 10-fold. This enormous jump in insurance costs is
lowering coastal real estate values and driving people and businesses out of
highly exposed states like Florida.

The devastation caused by Katrina was not an isolated incident. In the fall
of 1998, Hurricane Mitch--one of the most powerful storms ever to come out
of the Atlantic, with winds approaching 200 miles per hour--hit the east
coast of Central America. As atmospheric conditions stalled the normal
northward progression of the storm, some 2 meters of rain were dumped on
parts of Honduras and Nicaragua within a few days. The deluge collapsed
homes, factories, and schools, leaving them in ruins. It destroyed roads and
bridges. Seventy percent of the crops and much of the topsoil in Honduras
were washed away--topsoil that had accumulated over long stretches of
geological time. Huge mudslides destroyed villages, burying some local
populations.

The storm left 11,000 dead. Thousands more, buried or washed out to sea,
were never found. The basic infrastructure--the roads and bridges in
Honduras and Nicaragua--was largely destroyed. President Flores of Honduras
summed it up this way: "Overall, what was destroyed over several days took
us 50 years to build." The damage from this storm, exceeding the annual
gross domestic product of the two countries, set their economic development
back by 20 years.

In 2004, Japan experienced a record 10 typhoons (hurricanes) that
collectively caused $10 billion worth of losses. During the same season,
Florida was hit by 4 of the 10 most costly hurricanes in U.S. history. These
4 hurricanes together generated insurance claims of $22 billion.

Against this backdrop, insurance companies and reinsurance companies are
finding it difficult to calculate a safe level of premiums, since the
historical record traditionally used to calculate insurance fees is no
longer a guide to the future. For example, the number of major flood
disasters worldwide has grown over the last several decades, increasing from
6 major floods in the 1950s to 26 in the 1990s.

Insurers are convinced that with higher temperatures and more energy driving
storm systems, future losses will be even greater. They are concerned about
whether the industry can remain solvent under this onslaught of growing
damages. So, too, is Moody's Investors Service, which has several times
downgraded the creditworthiness of some of the world's leading reinsurance
companies over the last six years.

Thomas Loster, a climate expert at Munich Re, a leading re-insurance
company, says the overall balance of natural catastrophes is now "dominated
by weather-related disasters, many of them exceptional and extreme. We need
to stop this dangerous experiment humankind is conducting on the Earth's
atmosphere."

Munich Re has published a list of natural disasters with insured losses of
$1 billion or more. The first one came in 1983, when Hurricane Alicia struck
the United States, racking up $1.5 billion in insured losses. Of the 58
natural catastrophes with $1 billion or more of insured losses recorded
through the end of 2006, 3 were earthquakes, including the devastating 2004
earthquake-related Asian tsunami; the other 55 were weather-related--storms,
floods, hurricanes, or wildfires. During the 1980s, there were 3 such
events; during the 1990s, there were 26; and between 2000 and 2006 alone
there were 26.

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, the two largest events in terms of total damage
were Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which took down 60,000 homes and racked up
$30 billion worth of damage, and the flooding of China's Yangtze River basin
in 1998, which also cost an estimated $30 billion, a sum comparable to the
value of China's rice harvest. Part of the growing damage toll is due to
greater urban and industrial development in coastal areas and river
floodplains. But part is due to more-destructive storms.

In the West, the regions most vulnerable to more powerful storms currently
are the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States and the Caribbean
countries. In the East, it is East and Southeast Asia, including China,
Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Viet Nam, that are likely to bear the
brunt of the powerful storms crossing the Pacific. In the Bay of Bengal,
Bangladesh and the east coast of India are particularly vulnerable.

Western Europe, traditionally experiencing a heavily damaging winter storm
perhaps once in a century, had its first winter storm to exceed $1 billion
in 1987--one that caused $3.7 billion of destruction, $3.1 billion of which
was covered by insurance. Since then, Western Europe has had nine major
winter storms with insured losses ranging from $1.3 billion to $5.9 billion.

As the climate changes, more extreme weather events are expected. Andrew
Dlugolecki, a consultant on climate change and its effects on financial
institutions, notes that damage from atmospherically related events has
increased by roughly 10 percent a year. "If such an increase were to
continue indefinitely," he notes, "by 2065 storm damage would exceed the
gross world product. The world obviously would face bankruptcy long before
then." Few double-digit annual growth trends continue for several decades,
but Dlugolecki's basic point is that climate change can be destructive,
disruptive, and very costly.

If we allow the climate to spin out of our control, we risk huge financial
costs. In a late 2006 report, former World Bank chief economist Nicholas
Stern projected that the long-term costs of climate change could exceed 20
percent of gross world product (GWP). By comparison, the near-term costs of
cutting greenhouse gas emissions to stabilize climate, which Stern now
estimates at close to 2 percent of GWP, would be a bargain.

# # #

Adapted from Chapter 3, "Rising Temperatures and Rising Seas," in Lester R.
Brown, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2008), available for free downloading and purchase at
www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm.

For information contact:

Media Contact:
Reah Janise Kauffman
Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 12
E-mail: rjk (at) earthpolicy.org

Research Contact:
Janet Larsen
Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 14
E-mail: jlarsen (at) earthpolicy.org

Earth Policy Institute
1350 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 403
Washington, DC 20036
Web: www.earthpolicy.org

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Community Vision for Jobs & Housing: The Future of the Concord Naval Weapons Station - May 16, 2009

2009-05-08T08:32:00.001-07:00

Community Vision for Jobs & Housing:

The Future of the Concord Naval Weapons Station

Saturday, May 16, 2009

9 AM - 1 PM

Concord Senior Center

2727 Parkside Cir, Concord

Lunch Provided!

Community Vision for Jobs & Housing

The Community Coalition for a Sustainable Concord, the UC Berkeley Labor Center, and the UC Berkeley Department of City and Regional Planning invite you a community discussion and workshop on the reuse of the Concord Naval Weapons Station.

Come join your neighbors as we review our progress and look at the road ahead to making the Base’s reuse beneficial for current and future generations of Concord Residents.

Sponsored by the Community Coalition for a Sustainable Concord (including members Carpenters Local Union 152, Contra Costa County Central Labor Council, Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization [CCISCO], East Bay Housing Organizations [EBHO], Neighborhood Alliance, Save Mount Diablo), the UC Berkeley Labor Center, & the UC Berkeley Department of City and Regional Planning.

Part of EBHO’s Affordable Housing Week

www.EBHO.org/AHW2009

**Traducción en Español**

The workshop & lunch are free but a RSVP is requested.

For more information and to RSVP, please contact Cheryl Brown at cherylbrown@berkeley.edu or 510-642-1851.

New Conference: May 9, 2009

2009-04-07T11:39:00.001-07:00

Making Climate Change Policy Work in Difficult Economic Times: A CONFERENCE FOCUSING ON THE JOB AND EQUITY IMPACTS OF CARBON PRICING POLICIES
May 5, 2009	8:30 AM—6 PM Conference 6:30 PM Reception UC Berkeley International House 2299 Piedmont Avenue Berkeley, CA

	Carbon pricing policies like cap-and-trade programs are being proposed or implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California, the Western states of the US and Canada, and nationally. This conference will explore the design options within carbon pricing policies that shape impacts on employment and equity.
Workshop topics include: In-depth workshop on carbon pricing policy options • Economic and equity impacts of carbon pricing policies • Common issues for labor and environmental justice groups • The politics of cap and trade in California and the West • How to prevent “leakage” • How to spend carbon revenues • Complementary policies
Confirmed speakers include: Rafael Aguilera, Verde Group • Bob Balgenorth, State Building and Construction Trades Council • Vivian Buckingham, CERES • Chris Busch, Center for Resource Solutions • Barbara Byrd, Oregon AFL-CIO • Carla Din, Apollo Alliance • Dean Florez, California State Senator • Dave Foster, Blue-Green Alliance • Kate Gordon, Apollo Alliance • Lisa Hoyos, AFL-CIO • Holmes Hummel, AAAS Congressional Science Fellow, 2007-2008 • Dan Kammen, UC Berkeley Energy and Resources Group • Ian Kim, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights • Jill Kubit, Cornell Global Labor Instutute • Bill Magavern, Sierra Club • Rachel Morello-Frosch, UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management • Payal Parekh, International Rivers • Manuel Pastor, USC Program on Environmental and Regional Equity • Art Pulaski, California Labor Federation • Tim Rainey, Workforce and Economic Development Program • Jeff Rickert, AFL-CIO Center for Green Jobs • Nia Robinson, Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative • Erin Rogers, Union of Concerned Scientists • David Roland-Holst, UC Berkeley Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics • Neil Tangri, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) • Jane Williams, California Communities Against Toxics • Joel Yudken, High Road Strategies
Sponsors: UC Berkeley Labor Center, Apollo Alliance, California Labor Federation's Workforce and Economic Development Program, California State Building and Construction Trades Council, Don Vial Center on Employment in the Green Economy, Energy Foundation, Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, Western Climate Advocates Network (WeCAN), and others. Registration: Register at http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/greenjobs/climatechange.shtml. Registration fee is $100 and includes the day-long conference and post-conference reception. Student registration fee is $50. Community groups needing scholarships can contact Andrea Buffa at (510) 325-3653, andreabuffa@berkeley.edu General information: Theresa Short, laborcenter@berkeley.edu, 510-642-0323

Green Economy and Silicon Valley to be Discussed at California Studies Conference

2009-04-07T09:05:00.001-07:00

The following event includes programming that covers the emerging green economy:

==============================================================

California Studies Conference 2009

“Debugging the Silicon Dream: Real Life in a Virtual World

Friday, April 24, 2009 • 9am–5pm • De Anza College

21250 Stevens Creek Blvd, Cupertino, CA •

Campus Center Conference Rooms A&B

==============================================================

Green Jobs, Green Economy: The Tilting Point

2009-04-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

At UC Berkeley's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE), the Vial Center on Employment in the Green Economy is organizing and planning to study the employment impact of the green economy. This blog will aggregate news about the greee economy with a special focus on employment. A weekly digest will be made avaialable to subscribers.

This new initiative comes at a timely moment. There is substantial convergence underway among various academic disciplines, many of which are studying sustainable economic growth. There is widespread consensus that innovative solutions to the world's energy and environmental challenges must necessarily be multi-disicplinary. As a consequence, the emerging green economy is very likely to bring sweeping changes to the workplace, to work styles, and new challenges for managers and employment.

The Green Employment and The Green Economy Blog will chronicle this movement. The blog is a project of the IRLE Library, an Affiliated Library of the University of California, Berkeley.