2.3 Responding to global climate change

Disparities in exposure to climate change risk and vulnerability, including variations in people’s location, wealth, social differences (age, gender, education), risk perception

  • Detailed examples of two or more societies with contrasting vulnerability

Government-led adaptation and mitigation strategies for global climate change:

  • global geopolitical efforts, recognizing that the source/s of greenhouse gas emissions may be spatially distant from the countries most impacted
  • carbon emissions offsetting and trading
  • technology, including geo-engineering

Civil society and corporate strategies to address global climate change

  • Case study of the response to climate change in one country focusing on the actions of non-governmental stakeholders

Synthesis, evaluation and skills opportunities

Why perspectives and viewpoints may be different about the need for, practicality and urgency of action on global climate change

Vocabulary:

  • Hazard: A threat (whether natural or human) that has the potential to cause loss of life, injury, property damage, socio-economic disruption, or environmental degradation
    • Examples: Hurricane/Typhoon, Drought, Floods, Landslide, Earthquake, Tsunami, Volcanoes
  • Hazard Event: The occurrence (realization) of a hazard, the effects of which change demographic, economic and/or environmental conditions
  • Disaster:A major hazard event, which causes widespread disruption to a community or region, with significant demographic, economic and/or environmental losses, and which the affected community is unable to deal with adequately without outside help (IB definition, other may vary)
  • Risk is the probability of a hazard event (in this case GCC and its ) causing harmful consequences (expected losses in terms of deaths, injuries, property damage, economy and environment).
  • Vulnerability: The geographic conditions that increase the susceptibility of a community to a hazard or to the impacts of a hazard event
    • Your textbook uses the term sensitivity. Don't use sensitivity.
  • Exposure: the degree to which people are exposed to climate change
  • Adaptation: the process of change by which a society becomes better suited to its environment or hazard risk. (In this case GCC)
  • Adaptive capacity: the degree to which they (countries, people, businesses etc) could mitigate the potential harm by taking action to reduce their exposure or vulnerability

Discussion: Using specific locations and events, how does the following affect risk and vulnerability to hazard events caused by global climate change?

  • location
  • wealth
  • age
  • gender
  • education
  • risk perception

Case study #1: Bangladesh


  • Take detailed notes of Nagle and Cooke p. 452-5 and the video below (more on my Diigo)
  • Review notes from the Dhaka Megacity case study from the Core 1 unit
  • Pay close attention to the risk and vulnerability to climate change in terms of:
    • location
    • wealth
    • age
    • gender
    • education
    • risk perception

IB Style question:

In your groups, write a thesis statement for the following IB style question:

Using examples, examine the demographic and socio-economic factors that affect the vulnerability of a community to hazard events. [10] Markscheme

Case study #2: Canada

Each group will read on of these articles and take notes on this document.

  1. Mortillaro, Nicole, How Climate Change will affect Canadians
  2. Federated Insurance, The Impact of Climate Change on Canadian Agriculture
  3. Nunavut Climate Change Center: Climate Change Impacts on Nunavut (up to Impacts on Infrastructure)
  4. Nunavut Climate Change Center: Climate Change Impacts on Nunavut (From Impacts on Transportation)
  5. Plait, Phil, Global Warming has now made the Northwest Passage a thing

Write your notes here

Question:

Compare and contrast the consequences of Global Climate Change on two societies with contrasting vulnerability.[10]


Government-led adaptation and mitigation strategies for global climate change:

Core 2.3 COP21 and the Paris Agreement

In groups, have a look at 2 countries' Intended National Determined Contributions (INDCs) for the COP21 Paris Agreement, (you may look at other, simpler sources) and take notes on each one's main goals and changes in terms of:

  • GHG emission
  • Mitigation
  • Adaptation
  • Financing
  • Emission/Carbon trading
  • Carbon offsetting
  • Technology, including engineering

Mitigating and Adapting to Global Climate Change

Econ kids: Explain externalities? How is CO2 an externality? How would you measure the cost of such externalities? How would you pay for them?

Reduce Resource Consumption (Core 3)

  • Substitution (biofuels or renewable energy)
  • Reduce energy consumption
  • Reduce consumption through efficiency

Growing importance of renewable energy and technological innovation (Core 3)

Becoming cheaper and increasingly efficient.

  • Solar
  • Wind
  • Hydroelectric
  • Geothermal
  • Many others

Managing CO2 emissions

Using the handout, (YIS only) define the following terms and evaluate its effectiveness with the use of 1 or 2 examples

  • Carbon pricing
  • Carbon emission trading
  • Carbon off-setting
  • Emission reduction fund (ERF)

Here is a solution that is very unpopular

Evaluate the article's main points. How feasible is this idea?

Geo-engineering and Climate-engineering

You do not need to know all of these. Be familiar with at least two of each category.

In groups or 3, create 6 annotated diagrams explaining how the following help mitigate or adapt to the impacts of climate change. If applicable, give a location where this is being done/attempted/considered, and a simple evaluation.

1. CO2 removal

  • Carbon-sequestration
  • Protecting and enhancing carbon sinks
    • Afforestation and re-afforestation (REDD)
  • Desert greening
  • Genetically modified crops
  • Ocean fertilization

2. Managing insolation

  • Cloud seeding
  • Enhancing cloud brightness
  • Microbubbles
  • Space mirrors!

3. Reactive measures (Adaptation)

  • Seawalls
  • floating islands
  • Rainwater storage
  • Higher foundations for waterfront properties
  • Zoning changes
  • Better flood defence
  • Planned retreat of coasts
  • Changing agricultural systems
  • Enhanced emergency response
  • Education, awareness, economics etc

Infographic Exercise.

What makes a good infographic? (source C. Wright)

Have a look at each of the following infographics and answer the following questions:

  1. What is the main message of the infographic?
  2. What specific statistics can be easily understood?
  3. Is there a bias?
  4. How could it be improved? What could be added?
    • Consider general design, layout, readability, data,

Climate Finance and Carbon Markets

Sustainable Cities for Climate Action

Green Investment Potential in Europe

Summative assessment

You will create an outline for an essay answering the following question:

Evaluate the response to climate change of non-governmental stakeholders in a named country of your choice.

You can print the outline and bring it to class, where you will have 35 minutes to write it.

Your outline should include:

  • A thesis statement
  • An introduction where you introduce the issue and define your vocabulary
  • Three arguments, including a counter argument with
    • Supporting facts
    • Specific case study
  • A conclusion

Date of in-class essay: December 8th

Review for final exam

This website has a lot of valid information and case studies for IB Geography