That’s right, the World Bank, not my favorite international financial institution believes that the climate is changing due to anthropogenic global warming. How do I know that? Because they aren’t just issuing statements about the damage that climate change is causing, and will cause in the future. They are putting their money on the line as well by easing credit for financing of projects needed to ameliorate the effects of global warming:

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — The World Bank signed an agreement on Wednesday with mayors from 40 of the world’s biggest cities to work on technical and financial assistance for projects to minimize the effects of climate change. […]

The agreement will make it easier for investors who have been hesitant to finance projects to assess city action plans by providing a standard approach, said Robert B. Zoellick, the World Bank’s president. […]

Mayors said they were eager to gain access to the World Bank’s climate investment funds, which totaled $6.4 billion last year. Mr. Zoellick said the bank hoped to use that money to attract as much as $50 billion in private capital.

“What is holding back the sustainable clean technology revolution for a lot of mayors and businesses and households in a lot of countries is the lack of green financing,” said Sam Adams, the mayor of Portland, Ore. “The partnership with the World Bank begins to address that.”

In effect, the World Bank has seen the alarm signs going off all over the world, and sin”t ignoring them. Signs like the following:

Potential for Massive Food Shortages

CIUDAD OBREGÓN, Mexico — The dun wheat field spreading out at Ravi P. Singh’s feet offered a possible clue to human destiny. Baked by a desert sun and deliberately starved of water, the plants were parched and nearly dead. […]

The rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed to the point that it is failing to keep up with the demand for food, driven by population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.

Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories — wheat, rice, corn and soybeans — has outstripped production for much of the past decade, drawing once-large stockpiles down to worrisome levels. […]

Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists believe some, though not all, of those events were caused or worsened by human-induced global warming. […]

[E]xperts say that in coming decades, farmers need to withstand whatever climate shocks come their way while roughly doubling the amount of food they produce to meet rising demand. And they need to do it while reducing the considerable environmental damage caused by the business of agriculture.

The miracles of 20th Century agriculture are coming to an end, and the world teeters on the edge of massive starvation over the next two decades in large part due to the unpredictability of a changing climate. That isn’t just my opinion, it’s the opinion of score of agronomists who are convinced that our changing climate and population growth is a recipe for hunger on a scale not seen before in human history.

Farmers desperately need new crop varieties that can expand yields while resisting the effects of increased droughts, heavier precipitation events and flooding. Yet funding to deal with the problems farmers face has been practically non-existent. As one agricultural scientist and a senior executive at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center stated: “There’s just such a tremendous disconnect, with people not understanding the highly dangerous situation we are in.”

The disconnect isn’t with the scientific community (other than those funded by Exxon, et alia to lie about it) who have been running around “with their hair on fire” calling for immediate action.

Twenty Nobel prizewinners, including US energy secretary Steven Chu, Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, and Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, have compared the threat of climate change to that posed to civilisation by nuclear weapons. […]

We must recognise the fierce urgency of now. The evidence is compelling for the range and scale of climate impacts that must be avoided, such as droughts, sea level rise and flooding leading to mass migration and conflict. The scientific process, by which this evidence has been gathered, should be used as a clear mandate to accelerate the actions that need to be taken. Political leaders cannot possibly ask for a more robust, evidence-based call for action.”

… “Without directing current economic recovery resources wisely, and embarking on a path towards a low carbon economy, the world will have lost the opportunity to meet the global sustainability challenge. Decarbonising our economy offers a multitude of benefits, from addressing energy security to stimulating unprecedented technological innovation. A zero carbon economy is an ultimate necessity and must be seriously explored now.

The problem isn’t with the researchers who are documenting daily the effects on our rapidly changing climate for everything crop yields to the die off of coral reefs and the increasing acidifcation of our oceans, as the rate of the increase in carbon emissions approaches the worst case scenario discussed by the IPCC.

After a dip in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis, emissions are estimated to have climbed to a record 30.6 Gigatonnes (Gt), a 5% jump from the previous record year in 2008, when levels reached 29.3 Gt.

In addition, the IEA has estimated that 80% of projected emissions from the power sector in 2020 are already locked in, as they will come from power plants that are currently in place or under construction today.

“This significant increase in CO2 emissions and the locking in of future emissions due to infrastructure investments represent a serious setback to our hopes of limiting the global rise in temperature to no more than 2ºC,” said Dr Fatih Birol, Chief Economist at the IEA who oversees the annual World Energy Outlook, the Agency’s flagship publication.

The problem isn’t with the mayors of major cities who are dealing with the effects as we speak (see the NY Times article quoted above). The problem isn’t with major religious organizations such as the Vatican, which issued an urgent appeal to the world’s leaders to act now to address climate change:

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a Vatican advisory panel, hosted a conference last month on the causes and consequences of retreating mountain glaciers. Its final report, dated May 5 and signed by independent glaciologists, climate scientists, meteorologists and chemists, was posted on the Vatican website Tuesday.

“We appeal to all nations to develop and implement, without delay, effective and fair policies to reduce the causes and impacts of climate change on communities and ecosystems, including mountain glaciers and their watersheds, aware that we all live in the same home,” the report said. […]

“Perhaps the reality that the Vatican recognizes this fact, as the report indicates, is worth mentioning to those who remain unconvinced of human-induced climate change,” [Brenda Ekwurzel, the assistant director of climate research and analysis at the Union of Concerned Scientists] said in an email.

Insurance companies and the Pentagon have already started to enact their plans to cope with the threat of climate change. So, who is the most significant group that continues to ignore the greatest threat to the long term survival of the human race this century (and doubtless centuries to come?

That’s an easy one to answer: Republicans and the special interests (primarily the fossil fuel industries) that back them. Consider the following:

Republican Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie (the helicopter Governor)

Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday that New Jersey would become the first state to withdraw from a 10-state trading system, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, declaring it an ineffective way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The decision delighted Republicans who have introduced bills in the New Jersey Legislature to repeal a law authorizing the state’s participation in the program.

Republican Presidential Candidates

One thing that Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have in common: These GOP presidential contenders all are running away from their past positions on global warming, driven by their party’s loud doubters who question the science and disdain government solutions. […]

It’s an indicator of a shift on the issue among conservative Republicans, who have an outsized influence in the party’s presidential primary elections. Over the last few years, Gallup polling has shown a decline in the share of Americans saying that global warming’s effects have already begun — from a high of 61 percent in 2008 to 49 percent in March. The change is driven almost entirely by conservatives.

People who identify as Republicans

The net effect is that Democrats (66%) are now twice as likely as Republicans (31%) to believe the effects of global warming are already underway. Independents’ views (56%) are closer to Democrats’ than to Republicans’.

There are similarly large party differences on whether the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated. Two-thirds of Republicans, compared with 25% of Democrats, hold this view.

I’m not going to explore the reasons for why Republicans have become the party of Global Warming Deniers. That subject has been discussed before on numerous occasions.

What I do want to emphasize, however, is that like it or not, America has an outsized influence on actions to counteract climate change caused in large part on by human induced climate change, and I’m not just talking about our addiction to fossil fuels. I”m talking about the politicians at every level of government–local, state and federal–who actively prevent our nation from being a leading force to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions in the world. They are the force that prevents us from taking significant action to address climate issues. They are the party that is pushing us toward catastrophes that will forever change life on our planet, changes that will involve the deaths of millions if not billions of people.

Republicans at the city, county, state and federal level not only damage our nation with their continuing support for fossil fuel use over the development of alternative, renewable sources of energy, but they also are a major stumbling block in the rest of the world’s government’s taking concerted action to eliminate carbon emissions as quickly as we can. In the face of all the scientific evidence, in the face of all the horrific extreme weather events that have killed people around the world, they stubbornly persist to deny climate change, whether out of ideological reasons or simply because their allegiance has been purchased by the Big Oil and Gas Companies.

It is sad, and ironic, that many of the strongholds of the Republican party have been subjected to some of the worst of these extreme weather and climate events, from the rural areas which suffer from drought and flooding, to those southern and southwestern states which have experienced deadly storms, flooding and drought. The same communities that regularly support republicans also have endured the ill effects of our continued dependence on oil, from the BP disaster in the Gulf Coast to the damage done to rural communities by hydrofracking.

Until we eliminate the scourge of conservative Republicans who deny global warming, deny the massive extinction of plant and animal species, deny that fossil fuels are a national security issue that threatens our economy and our future prospects for recovery, we will continue to watch our nation and the world spiral toward ever more horrific disasters. Once upon a time Republicans used to accept the issue of global warming and climate change was a legitimate topic for discussion. Now their base, their politicians, their political leaders and the sources of their campaign financing have led them to deny what is obvious to any rational person: the world is burning while they fiddle.

Republicans in their current iteration are one of the primary causes, if not the most significant cause, that far too little is being done to prevent the dangerous times that await us in the not very distant future should our nation continue to refuse to take action to address the issue of our rapidly warming world and the consequences of that warming to human beings and to our planet.

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