Forecast impacts of climate change

It is useful to remind ourselves of the climate change trajectory we are on.

This will have a significant impact for business, in terms of:

  1. Disruption/removal of production and supply chains
  2. Disruption/removal of customers willing or able to buy products and services
  3. Disruption/removal of capital as it is refocused instead to fund the protection from the effects of Climate Change of those who own the capital

This chart (sorry, not to be able to reference the original source) combines IPPC data on CO2 levels with the predictions made by Mark Lynas’ book “Six Degrees”.

Bottom line?

By the end of this century we will have experienced at least a 1.5 degree heating, and 50% probability about a 2.5 degree heating.

That has implications for:

  • food production
  • significant species loss, on land and sea
  • summertime death tolls from heatstroke
  • climate refugees placing additional stress on already-stretched systems
  • loss of glaciers, with implications for available agricultural and drinking water, especially in India, China, Bangladesh

Note also that predictions made for the one and two degree heating have already begun: the arctic is melting faster than forecast (this summer a team rowed to the north pole); the oceans are becoming increasingly acidic; and a fifth of all mammal species are already vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered of becoming extinct (with a fifth of all amphibians endangered or critically endangered).

 

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