Introduction

Climate change is an issue that is much discussed by politicians, the most powerful of which seem to move reluctantly from one climate summit to the next where they become involved in heated arguments in an attempt to draw up agreements that will reduce the extent of climate change in the future. However, even though concerted efforts are being made at such summits, binding agreements with respect to the reduction of emissions are very hard to come by.

However, worse than the slow pace of climate negotiations is the constant voice of climate change scepticism which is so often widely heard. Such scepticism is finding an audience in many countries around the world as people look for any excuse to disregard the issue of climate change and thus protect business interests or maintain their current lifestyle with little need to change even the smallest aspect. In just the last few days a prominent Chinese intellectual Zhang Musheng has proclaimed climate change an American conspiracy to increase sales of green technology. Even more worrying is the recent declaration by Rick Perry a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination that he is not afraid to call himself a “climate change sceptic”.

In the meantime, while incessant political wrangling is ongoing and a stream of weakly evidenced climate scepticism continues to find itself a welcoming audience there are some societies which are already having to face up to the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

For example, due to increasing global temperatures the IPCC’s fourth assessment report (2007) predicts that sea level rise during the 21^st century could be anywhere from 0.18m to 0.59m.  Such a rise in sea level is easily brushed off as insignificant when sitting in London, a city in which a large amount of land sits at well over 10m above sea level. However, many people around the world will look at these figures with fear and trepidation, a 0.59m rise in sea level is not so insignificant when you live on a deltaic plane or an island which has an average elevation of just 1m above sea level. This is a reality that many societies around the world are being confronted with, and as such, under even the more modest of the IPCC’s projections, are expected to lose large areas of land as well as suffering from a wide range of other negative effects that will accompany such a rise.

In this blog I will explore, with particular focus on small island communities, the many ways in which climate change is already having a significant impact on societies around the world, as well as investigating historical climate change and the effect that this had upon past societies. By doing this I hope not only to present what is the reality at the front line of climate change, but also offer an insight into what the future holds for those societies which find themselves under threat today.