No worries, you're not likely to hear about it anytime soon. Unless you're unlucky enough to find yourself in its path ....
Nearly 200 countries to meet for UN talks on global warming
Associated Press, November 25, 2012
[...]
Borrowing a buzzword from the U.S. budget debate, Tim Gore of the British charity Oxfam said developing countries, including island nations for whom rising sea levels pose a threat to their existence, stand before a "climate fiscal cliff."
[...] a Green Climate Fund designed to channel up to $100 billion annually to poor countries has yet to begin operating.
Climate Change is just a theory ... don't you know. Some have
spent millions to make this the
"common wisdom."
Some people just have to "watch their step" ... more than others ... It's just the luck of the draw ...
Climate ‘fiscal cliff’ looms for developing countries if leaders come to Doha with no new money
oxfam.org -- Published: 25 November 2012
New Oxfam research finds most climate finance pledges so far have been recycled funds or loans
[...]
After another year of extreme weather, developing countries face a looming climate ‘fiscal cliff’ at the end of 2012 with no clarity about how they will be supported to reduce emissions and adapt to the devastating impacts of climate change, international aid agency Oxfam said today ahead of the UN Climate Change negotiations in Doha, Qatar.
At the 2009 Copenhagen talks, developed countries committed to pay $100 billion per year by 2020 of climate finance and made a down payment of $30 billion for 2010 – 2012, called ‘Fast Start Finance.’ At the 2011 Cancun talks the Green Climate Fund was established to channel the $100 billion commitment. In just over a month, the Fast Start Finance period will end and the Green Climate Fund remains empty.
[...]
Most of the money comes as loans
Just 43 per cent of known Fast Start Finance has been given as grants; most of it was in loans that developing countries have to repay at varying levels of interest. Only 21 per cent of known funds have been earmarked to support adaptation programs to help communities become more resilient to the effects of climate change.
[...]
The climate "fiscal cliff" (pdf)
OXFAM MEDIA ADVISORY
25 November 2012
[...]
2012: Extreme weather and extreme prices are the new normal
Superstorm Sandy smashed through Haiti, Jamaica, the Bahamas and the US East Coast last month creating, for many, the iconic image of climate change's destructive power in 2012. Over the last one hundred years, sea levels have risen nearly a foot around the New York area, which amplified the storm surge that wreaked havoc on communities in Staten Island and New Jersey.
Oxfam and many others have warned that such events are a harbinger of what is to come in a rapidly warming world. 2012 showed that the future we warned about is already here. As well as devastating people's lives and livelihoods directly, 2012 also highlighted how they can be hit by the impact of climate change on the world's food prices.
The Northern summer saw severe droughts in the US -- the worst the country had seen in 60 years --and in Russia, helping to drive food prices to reach historic peaks. In August, the World Bank reported that the price of maize and soybeans had reached all-time highs in July.[1] Poor people in the Arab region, where this year‟s UN Climate Change talks will be held, illustrate what vulnerability to high food prices means. Yemen is in the grip of a severe food security crisis and some 10 million people -- almost half the population -- do not have enough food to eat, five million people need urgent emergency assistance, and one million children are at risk of malnutrition. High global food prices could further threaten its food security as the country imports 90 per cent of its wheat.
[...]
Welcome to the "New Normal" ... as American Legislators argue about how to rob Peter to pay Paul cut the benefits of seniors and hard-hit workers, to pay the Nation's debts that financed the extreme prosperity of the rich, over the last decade.
Hey Legislators, you had your Bush Tax Cuts already -- Where are the Jobs?
Hey Legislators, you had your Wall Street Bailouts already -- Where are the Loans?
Where is the urgency and concern about Climate-mitigation Jobs, that the "New Normal" will continue to excise from us, in an ever-more chaotic way?
Just ask a victim of Sandy, or Katrina, or a Midwestern Farmer, or a Wildfire refugee --
if there is a "financial impact" from those ever more common Extreme Weather events.
Ask them what life is like on the other side of their personal climate-caused "fiscal cliffs."
Some would no doubt say is it is literally devastating.
Meanwhile the Legislators continue to fiddle while Rome burns dither and posture; continue to excuse and defend and dismiss their own lack of a sense of urgency,
-- while the world's weather system continue to test its new supercharged limits ... irregardless.
Watch out for that very hard landing on the other side ... Some would say "it's brutal."
[Red Cross: Sandy Relief Fund]