34 Warming Waters and Souring Seas: Climate Change and Ocean Acidification

Author(s):  
Stephens Tim

This chapter examines the impact of climate change and ocean acidification on the oceans and their implications for the international law of the sea. In particular, it assesses the implications of rising sea levels for territorial sea baselines, the seawards extent of maritime zones, and maritime boundaries. It also considers the restrictions placed by the UN Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) upon States in pursuing climate mitigation and adaptation policies, such as attempts to ‘engineer’ the global climate by artificially enhancing the capacity of the oceans to draw CO2 from the atmosphere. The chapter analyzes the role of the LOSC, alongside other treaty regimes, in addressing the serious threat of ocean acidification.

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-472
Author(s):  
Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo ◽  
Mirya R Holman

Abstract Climate change policymaking has stalled at the federal level in the United States, especially since Donald Trump’s election as president. Concurrently, extreme weather, rising sea levels, and other climatic effects have increased the salience of climate change in the mass public and among elected officials. In response, legislators in state governments increasingly introduce and adopt policies associated with climate change. In this article, we evaluate the state of climate change policymaking in state legislatures, with a focus on overall trends in climate mitigation and adaptation innovation and cases of policy retrenchment. We document an increased level of climate legislation introduced in U.S. states since President Trump’s election, particularly in states under Democratic Party control. We evaluate patterns of introduced legislation across the states between 2011 and 2019 and consider the factors associated with bill sponsorship. Our results demonstrate the increased partisan nature of climate change policymaking in U.S. states.


Author(s):  
Sharon Friel

This chapter explains the role of human activities in driving climate change, and some of its most significant impacts. It discusses justice issues raised by climate change, including causal responsibility, future development rights, the distribution of climate change harms, and intergenerational inequity. The chapter also provides a status update on current health inequities, noting the now recognized role of political, economic, commercial, and social factors in determining health. This section also discusses environmental epidemiology and the shift to eco-social approaches and eco-epidemiology, noting that while eco-epidemiologists have begun to research the influence of climate change on health, this research has not yet considered in depth the influence of social systems. The chapter concludes with an overview of how climate change exacerbates existing health inequities, focusing on the health implications of significant climate change impacts, including extreme weather events, rising sea levels, heat stress, vector-borne diseases, and food insecurity.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasios Danos ◽  
Konstantina Boulouta

This article analyses the profound and rapid climate changes that have taken place worldwide in the past two decades and their effects on modern enterprise. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing strategies to adapt to and counterbalance future impacts of climate change sustainably are among the most pressing needs of the world today. Global temperatures are predicted to continue rising, bringing changes in weather patterns, rising sea levels, and increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Such climatic events can have a major impact on households, businesses, critical infrastructure and vulnerable sections of society, as well as having a major economic impact. Therefore, society must prepare to cope with living in a changing climate. The effects of a changing climate have considerable impacts on modern enterprises. In some parts of the world, these impacts are increasingly becoming evident.


Climate Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 279-319
Author(s):  
Benjamin J. Richardson

Climate change has multifaceted aesthetic dimensions of legal significance. Global warming alters the aesthetic properties of nature, and further aesthetic changes are precipitated by climate mitigation and adaptation responses of impacted societies. The social and political struggles to influence climate change law are also influenced by aesthetics, as environmental activists and artists collaborate to influence public opinion, while conversely the business sector through its marketing and other aesthetic communications tries to persuade consumers of its climate-friendly practices to forestall serious action on global warming. This article distils and analyses these patterns in forging a novel account of the role of aesthetics in climate change law and policy, and it makes conclusions on how this field of law should consider aesthetic values through ‘curatorial’ guidance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-47
Author(s):  
Heather Alberro

Human is at the heart of the story of climate change in the Anthropocene where, according to Dipesh Chakrabarty (2012), human behaviors have influenced the environment and created a distinct geological epoch. Current climate change issues are largely human induced. This implies that the human species is now part of the natural history of the planet.  In November 2016, Stephen Hawking warned that humanity has 1000 years to leave the earth due to climate change, but in his most recent BBC documentary aired on June 15, 2017 called Expedition New Earth, he suggested humans have just 100 years left before doomsday. In spite of such warnings and writings, Donald Trump withdrew America from the Paris Climate Agreement on June 2017, on the same day, satellite images showed that a huge mass of ice in an area of ​​five thousand square kilometres was breaking away from the Antarctic continent under the impact of rising temperature. It seems that Trump’s act is beyond ecological consideration as he believes the agreement could “cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025”. Projections of climate change, however, have shown horrible scenarios involving a central economic metropolis such as New York losing much of its lands because of rising sea levels. The inhabitants of such areas will have to uproot their communities and cultures to move to less vulnerable lands. Thus, it is important to examine how ecoutopian literature is responding to the conditions of the human being in this epoch. In the following interview, Heather Alberro has answered to some questions on climate change, the conditions of human being in the Anthropocene, and the role of literature and culture in relation to environmental issues.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shivani Patel

<p><b>Science tells us that we are close to the irreversible tipping point into an unknown climate of the Anthropocene in which humanity has no option but to adapt or to be destroyed. Human influence is changing the earth and a major factor is urbanisation. Cities are one of the largest contributors to global climate change.</b></p> <p>This thesis develops a design-led research methodology and approach that develops alternative, speculative landscape intervention strategies to bridge the gap between climate change science and the landscape and the residents of Island Bay, in the city of Wellington, New Zealand. This research aims to take full advantage of new technologies and systems to provide resilient social, ecological and physical solutions for the coastal neighbourhood in the face of climate-related change. These solutions form a comprehensive framework and tools that anticipate a foreseeable future of saturated landscapes. It is a strategy that builds the adaptive capacity of the coastal zone, enhances existing natural systems, accommodates a variety of best coastal management practices and integrates alternative concepts in the coastal neighbourhood adaptation management plan.</p> <p>These solutions address the unpredictable issue of rising sea levels, storm surges and coastal inundation. In addition, the approach fosters urban environment solutions at various scales, such what a property owner can do and what public/private cooperation can do. Overall, this new integrated system approach has the potential to recalibrate urban coastal environments, catalyse resiliency and provide a robust model for designing mitigative, adaptative coastal communities in response to rising sea-levels and to support a new set of relationships between nature and urbanity.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Dominika Krupocin ◽  
Jesse Krupocin

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges and most pressing issues faced by humanity in the modern era. Extreme weather events, changes to world ecosystems, species extinction, disruption of animal and human migration, resource shortages, socio-economic concerns, outbreaks and pandemics, as well as domestic and international conflicts represent only a few select potential climate change consequences. Regrettably, when considering the issues pertinent to climate change, one of the oft-overlooked areas is cultural security. Rising sea levels will lead to some of the world’s islands and coastal cities essentially being erased from Earth, resulting in the destruction, and possibly even the disappearance, of their cultural heritage. Inhabitants of endangered and unlivable areas are likely to drive mass exodus on a global scale, and forcibly displaced persons who find themselves in a new socio-cultural reality face countless challenges that will hinder their sense of cultural security. The most immediate concerns are related to the potential eruption of local and regional conflicts, emergence of negative social behaviors, disappearance of national language and cultural identity, and statelessness due to a loss of habitable lands, all of which pose severe threats to cultural security.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gajendra Sharma ◽  
Birat Bade

The global climate is changing due to anthropogenic activities such as industrialization, infrastructure development, deforestation etc. Expected effects of climate change include increase in global temperatures, rising sea levels, changing precipitation, melting of glaciers, less snowfall, expansion of deserts etc. Most ecosystems are affected by manmade climate change and Mount Everest is no exception. This paper delves into the effects of global warming on Mount Everest and how Internet of Things (IOT) can be used to correctly monitor these effects. The IOT system will take three parameters temperature, carbon parts per million in the atmosphere and snowfall. This research paper also proposes a IOT framework to measure the net snowfall. The data gathered by the IOT system will be used to create a model will be created to monitor the effect of temperature and carbon parts per million on snow fall.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Antonia Tigre

AbstractSince their inception, climate change negotiations have stalled because of the scope of parties’ mitigation responsibilities under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The concept of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC) became a core principle of the framework to ensure consensus on a global climate policy in 1992 and to promote differentiation. By letting each country assess its current responsibilities and capacities for climate mitigation through their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), the Paris Agreement has built on the principle of CBDR-RC and promoted self-differentiation. As the concept evolved, the role of emerging economies has been a particular focus of discussions. Academia is still grappling with the revised meaning of CBDR-RC and the newly introduced NDCs. This article contributes to the discussion by analyzing the role of emerging economies in climate governance through the lens of regional responsibility. In particular, it discusses how cooperation can be a more effective way to ensure differentiation, especially by distinguishing emerging economies from other developing countries with fewer capacities. The article uses the Amazon rainforest as a case study, discussing Brazil’s role within the region. Building on lessons from regional schemes that have successfully promoted climate mitigation, the article looks at the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) as an avenue for enhanced cooperation at the regional level.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lumír Gvoždík

Thermoregulatory behaviour represents an important component of ectotherm non-genetic adaptive capacity that mitigates the impact of ongoing climate change. The buffering role of behavioural thermoregulation has been attributed solely to the ability to maintain near optimal body temperature for sufficiently extended periods under altered thermal conditions. The widespread occurrence of plastic modification of target temperatures that an ectotherm aims to achieve (preferred body temperatures) has been largely overlooked. I argue that plasticity of target temperatures may significantly contribute to an ectotherm's adaptive capacity. Its contribution to population persistence depends on both the effectiveness of acute thermoregulatory adjustments (reactivity) in buffering selection pressures in a changing thermal environment, and the total costs of thermoregulation (i.e. reactivity and plasticity) in a given environment. The direction and magnitude of plastic shifts in preferred body temperatures can be incorporated into mechanistic models, to improve predictions of the impact of global climate change on ectotherm populations.


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