Rachel Ilana Block's blog

Yesterday’s New York Times op-ed piece by Al Gore is well worth a read.  It’s one of those pieces where I found myself nodding along to the computer screen.  Gore helpfully cuts through to the heart of the supposed controversies about the climate science and within the climate science community. 

Photo © iStockphoto.com

His arguments echo what I heard at a recent seminar here at the Bank on the role and functioning of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the overblown reaction to mistakes that are real but which in no way alter the overwhelming majority of existing scientific findings about climate change.

During that seminar Kristie Ebi, Executive Director of the IPCC Technical Support Unit for Working Group ll (which authors the volume addressing physical and social impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation) for the next round of assessments coming out in 2013, carefully explained the extensive review process applied by the IPCC. 

There is a self-interested economic logic that often holds true for political questions relating to climate change.  As reflected in the poll of public attitudes toward climate change commissioned by the WDR and published last month, citizens of the poorest countries—those most vulnerable to the physical impacts of climate change—are much more likely to rate climate change as “very serious” than are citizens of high-income countries, who possibly perceive themselves as less vulnerable.  The shares ranking climate change as a very serious problem were: U.S. 31%, Japan 38%, and France 43%, in contrast to Senegal 72%, Kenya 75%, and Bangladesh 85%.

Yet, while the livelihoods of a fisherman in Senegal, a pastoralist in Kenya, and a rice farmer in Bangladesh’s delta might be the most immediately vulnerable to climate change, it’s worth noting that the assets of an insurance company on the U.S.’s Gulf Coast, a real estate investor in Japan, and a champagne-producing giant in France are vulnerable too.

Photo © Rachel Block/World Bank

Reading the newspapers last January when Russia suspended the supply of gas to the rest of Europe—with Eastern European countries hardest hit—I could not help but think that the region might be better off with fewer sub-zero days during winter.

On a trip to the Balkans last year, I partook of the colorful summer bounty of peppers and tomatoes enjoyed throughout southern Russia and Southeastern Europe. 

What a contrast from the pickles and cabbage my great-great-grandparents subsisted on in Poland and Lithuania! Though I was raised “properly”—with a taste for pickled cauliflower and herring—I could see why the northern reaches of the region might appreciate a longer growing season and more sunny, tomato-ripening days.

Studying (and contributing to) projections of global food supply in the changing climate over the next century, I see precipitous drops in yields projected in already-poor swaths of Africa, and in densely populated and cultivated regions in South and East Asia.  But many have concluded that, globally, there will be enough food to go around—thanks to the expanding role of Europe and Central Asia as the breadbasket of the world—and assuming free and fair international trade in food.
 
A recent report by the World Bank, “Adapting to Climate Change in Europe and Central Asia,” argues that these outcomes can by no means be taken for granted.

Having grown up neither British nor celebrating Christmas—and thus without any firsthand experience of plum pudding—I didn’t find it particularly enlightening to learn, in 8th grade chemistry class, that the turn-of-the-century conception of the atom was akin to this fruited, brandied, yuletide delicacy. Surely this metaphor of bits of dried fruit suspended in crumbly pudding meant something real and tangible to someone, but not me. Yet lessons of science must be communicated thus—through metaphor—because, while plum pudding isn’t rich with meaning for everyone, nobody can see atoms with the naked eye either.

The same holds for climate change. We need to understand it in terms of something we can see, someone we can talk to, somewhere we can stand, or something we can—literally—sink our teeth into. And, as with the atom-as-plum-pudding pedagogical tool, important details can get lost in the process.

There’s been a lot of worrying news lately – particularly, news that looks bad for achieving global multilateral action on climate change.  The collapse of the Doha trade negotiations in July has been interpreted by many – including World Bank President Robert Zoellick and former EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson – as steepening the “uphill struggle” of the UNFCCC negotiations.

More recently, the unfolding global financial crisis is weakening optimism about tackling climate change.  The financial crisis is dominating headlines and bumping climate change ever lower on the international agenda.  The metaphors abound, as climate change “takes a back seat” and is “left out in the cold.”