GBN - Impact of Climate Change Report

While this report - "Impacts of Climate Change" out of the Global Business Network is even older than the last post, it's rather fascinating:

This paper offers policymakers an alternative approach to thinking about climate change and its impacts. Instead of starting with climate change and working out toward impacts, we focus on systems that are already generally vulnerable first, and then consider what the geophysics of climate change may do to them.

The report focuses on the dynamic and chaotic nature of systems already vulnerable to instability. Areas covered include ecosystems, water availability and urban systems, as well as the role of the State in society, traditional political coalitions, and something I love: "The Global Pop-Politics of Rumors":

A key uncertainty for the political economy of climate change is how the public, which will all but inevitably remain scientifically unenlightened on the subject, will react to the news of climate change. One possibility, which has been largely realized in the U.S., is an ongoing, mutually reinforcing mixture of apathy and ignorance. Another possibility, however, is paranoid overreactions of various sorts.

I wonder what historical precedents gave them that idea...