Obama Talks Climate Change. California Is Acting on It

Bryan Walsh*

The Salton Sea area of California's Imperial Valley
was once a thriving tourist destination,
but it deteriorated and dried up from the effects
of global warming (Brian L. Frank / Redux)

It’s not the happiest time to be an environmentalist. Climate change hit home last year with brutal force: 2012’s historic drought singed much of the Midwest, turning farms to dust and withering the corn crop. Other parts of the U.S. suffered through storms like Sandy and massive wildfires. Average annual temperatures in the continental U.S. beat the previous recorded high by a full 1°F (1.8°C). And the future is uglier still: over the weekend, British economist Nicholas Stern warned that climate change could be even worse than he predicted in his sobering 2006 report on the financial impact of warming, while on Jan. 28 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a draft report outlining the serious threat sea-level rise poses to the coastal U.S.

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Environment and economy on collision course

Rolf Wenkel

Photo: Fars

The world is confronted with mounting threats, the World Economic Forum has warned in its Global Risk Report. Among the risks are income disparity, the burden of sovereign debt and damage caused by climate change.

The 2013 Global Risk Report compiled by the World Economic Forum (WEF) is based on a poll of over 1,000 economists, policy makers, scientists and civil society activists. The majority of respondents singled out increasing income disparity as the risk which was most likely to manifest itself over the next ten years.

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