http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/revenge-of-the-rainforest-1638524.html
The title of this article says it all. As the rainforest becomes more depleted, our go to for carbon storage will no longer carry the burden we once depended on it for and now it seems it is revolting.
“But this massive natural “sink” for carbon cannot be relied on to continue absorbing carbon dioxide in perpetuity, a study shows. Researchers have found that, for a period in 2005, the Amazon rainforest actually slipped into reverse gear and started to emit more carbon than it absorbed.
Four years ago, a sudden and intense drought in the Amazonian dry season created the sort of conditions that give climate scientists nightmares. Instead of being a net absorber of about two billion tons of carbon dioxide, the forest became a net producer of the greenhouse gas, to the tune of about three billion tons.”
Without a serious movement to preserve this precious resource, the ‘lungs of the earth’ may begin its last exhale.
Filed under: Environmental | Tags: Adaptation, Birds, Butterflies, Cliamte Change
Seems the orinthologists and entomologists are the new line of defence against climate change.
Recent observation of bird behavior and migration has shown that they are now shifting significantly further north, according to a recent report from the Audubon Society.
“Analyses of citizen-gathered data from the past 40 years of Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count reveal that 58% of the 305 widespread species that winter on the continent have shifted significantly north since 1968, some by hundreds of kilometres.”
Meanwhile, the scientists are assisting the butterflies in their move, as they can’t really keep up with the changes in climate. This is being done to safeguard wildlife and avert potential extinctions.
This research could be helpful to other species as well. “Thomas said that assisted colonization could be applied anywhere, from Australian tropical forests to coral reefs. It could be costly but cheaper than allowing species to dwindle to numbers where they had to be bred in zoos.”
not to mention with the aforementioned birds, some of which are not adapting and face their own peril.
Recently the S&P 500 launched a ‘Carbon Efficient Index’ to assist investors and fund managers in finding companies that are responding best to climate change.
http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2009/03/10/pg-wal-mart-chevron-join-sp-carbon-efficient-index
The S&P Index aims to profile companies doing the most on climate change and uses a metric of total emissions to total company revenues in order to determine the most ‘effiicient’ companies in each sector. This is a simple and interesting approach; unfortunately, their work focused more on excluding the 100 worst than finding the best. If 400 of the 500 companies in the S&P 500 are actually carbon inefficient, this index will still only screen out at most 100 of them, leaving the other 300 inefficient companies with a ‘carbon efficient’ label. Additionally, the desire to maintain a 50% market cap weighting in each sector means that potentially even big inefficient polluters will have to be included.
At the end of the day, if you’re an investor who is concerned about climate change, it is still better to invest in companies on the S&P Carbon Efficient Index than the traditional S&P 500.
Valuing of externalities continues to grow and putting a cost on climate change (or carbon in particular) is just the first step towards true cost pricing for resources currently outside the economic system like water and ecosystem services. More climate change indices are expected in the future, and it is safe to assume that other environmental topics will be next.
