A team of international climate scientists, financial consultants, energy analysts and military and security experts collaborated to develop a risk assessment that aims to present the effects of climate change across different sectors and thus encourage leaders to think about the extent of priority that their respective fields should give to this environmental issue. According to the independent assessment, global warming, more than posing threats to the environment, may also fuel safety and social issues such as terrorism and migration.
Political issues must be enacted and as per the authors' analyses, the most essential focus must be given to the extent of effort that must be exerted in battling climate change. This decision should be built upon a complete risk assessment and include human actions toward the climate, the ways in which climate may alter in response and the effects of such change, and finally the possible interventions/ actions individuals might do to each other, in relation to climate change.
The team of experts evaluated [pdf] the ways in which emissions would prevail, including the direct and systemic risks associated with it. Direct risks pertain to the things that might clearly affect the planet when rise in emissions ensue; these include health, flooding, food shortage and water shortage. Systemic risks are those that cause threats to human systems such as social conflicts, security concerns, terrorism, migration, state status and humanitarian help. The paper suggests that the biggest risks posed by climate change are those that are steered by human interactions, markets and governments. The experts also said that when the effects of climate change become highly evident in some nations, migration may become a necessity rather than a choice and the risk of state to falter may arise, affecting numerous countries in the process.
Significant risks are definitely associated, not only with economic failure, but in human losses as well. The extent and manner in which these losses are perceived is a matter of ethics, as much as it is of economics.
The report also includes recommendations regarding how to treat risks assessments associated with climate change. The experts' recommendations include:
The risk assessment for climate change should be performed in the same manner as how risk assessment for public health and national security would be conducted. Safety planning for one nation anticipates the worst things that can happen. In the same way, assessing the risks of the emerging climate change should also require utmost efforts to plan for the worst that can happen to the environment in the long term.
Developing a risk assessment should involve experts from different fields of specialties. Valuable insights may not only come from climate scientists and energy experts, the political, scientific and military sectors should also be included so as to provide a holistic approach to the plan, that encompasses the entirety of climate change issues.
The completed risk assessment should directly be reported to the head of the government, and not just to the head of the environmental or climate sector. The level of importance that this risk assessment needs may only come from the highest form of authority in the nation.
The report was a collaborative effort of experts from the Cambridge University Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Harvard University Center for the Environment, Tsinghua University in China and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water from India.
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