How does one transform massive suffering into X% GDP?

Author addresses key issues and drawbacks of the infamous Stern Review (2006). It's quite a read and does provide a nice example of how everything, every single paper, books, newsitem, ..., should be put under close scrutiny and checked for consistency and truth. (Which, with the lack of time of a single individual, can be nigh impossible.)
Below, an excerpt. Still below, the source.

"The surprises are potential scenarios which scientists can outline to the best of their ability and
which involve loss of life and human infrastructure on a grand scale; losses only precedented by the mass movement of people, death and destruction of World War II.
  However, there is no enemy to defeat nor peace treaty to sign, only our own actions to control. Once the surprises start in earnest action will be too little too late. For example, ice sheet melt causing a six meter sea level rise is a scenario which would flood all the major coastal cities. A two-meter sea level rise alone will displace hundreds of millions of people and inundate low lying cities (Lenton et al., 2006: 15).
  How does this get transformed into X% GDP with any semblance of meaning left in the utter disaster and human suffering which would be entailed? Indeed, there are four major problems with the whole framing of human induced climate change as GDP losses and gains."

From: Spash, C. L. (2007). The economics of climate change impacts à la Stern: Novel and nuanced or rhetorically restricted?. Ecological Economics, 63(4), 706-713.

Stern Review:
Stern, N. (2006). Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. UK Government Economic Service, London. Available at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm, accessed on: 23.9.2013.

Climate Change Summit 2040, To be held on Mount Everest

 

Will say something about this later, but for now:
2012 was the year the Kyoto protocol targets "ran out" (from 2007 - 2012, even though Kyoto was signed in 1997!).
As of now, we DO NOT have a binding international agreement ... not until 2015, when they will try to form another one.
... Which will ENTER in force probably in 2017 or as late as 2020.

... Can you see how ever increasing GHG emissions and environmental degradation, WHILE we talk and quibble (/squabble) about how best to do it will hinder us in the very goals we are trying to achieve?

Mind, there has been an increasing number of studies stating that the 2 degrees target* for the 2050/2100 will be increasingly harder to meet, since we're all going berserk and trying to race each-other in the unsustainable economy. They say that if the most strict emission abatements/reductions were applied by the developed AND developing countries, MAYBE we would JUST achieve the 2 degrees target.

I don't know how much you know about the planetary ecosystem resilience ... I know only enough to know I haven't got a clue. But I do "know" that it's going to be increasingly harder to survive.

See also my blog with many more links (interspersed with some rants, granted): http://aljobaljoenvironmental.blogspot.nl/

The photo is from The Economist, from Kal Cartoons (link also here), though I originally got it from a blog, here. Ha, I used in my MSc thesis presentation. You know, as the classical "end humour" photo.

Rise of Climate Refugees: Nowhere to turn

From a blog, describing the life and situation of <climate> refugees in Nairobi/Kenya.

  Both Teddy and Admassu were born in Ethiopia and forced to flee their homes. Teddy left after he and his father were tortured by the current regime for handing out human rights leaflets. He fits the standard definition of refugee, having fled his country’s trenchant political persecution. But for Admassu, who left Ethiopia’s desiccating landscape, things are more complicated. If there were such a thing as an environmental refugee, Admassu, along with hundreds of thousands of others around the globe, would be one—but there is simply no such thing.

A refugee is a person who flees persecution based on his or her race, religion, political opinion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group. This is the definition the international community coined in “never again” spirit in the wake of the Holocaust. Currently, Kenya is home to over 600,000 refugees from dozens of neighboring countries: they flee political repression in Ethiopia, protracted conflict in eastern Congo, and, most infamously in recent years, a devastating state failure and wide-spread famine in Somalia. But Kenya is also home to thousands of migrants like Admassu who are not among these protected refugees—nor will they be unless current laws change.

Admassu left the Kambata region of Ethiopia in October of 2011, just two months prior to our meeting, because the changing weather rendered his life, in effect, unlivable. He comes from a long line of farmers in one of Ethiopia’s most fertile regions. But since 2005, Teddy translates, the weather has not been right. “Before five years ago, the weather is better for growing something. This time, it’s not good,” Teddy translates. All the weather patterns Admassu had come to rely on are now bunk. “Nothing grows. It’s very dry.”

From post named Nowhere to Turn, By Lauren Markham, on April 15, 2013.