There’s a lot to read about the Paris Climate Talks, and it’s hard to navigate your way to the most significant articles. Here are a few worth reading on weather-related disasters, climate refugees, Naomi Klein’s take on silencing the most impacted by climate change and its monstrous violence, and realistic expectations from the talks by Post Carbon Institute.

Weather-related Disasters

For background information, the UN has been releasing statistics in the weeks leading up to the Climate Talks. This piece on weather-related disasters was particularly sobering. Here are a few excerpts:

Weather-related disasters in the past two decades have killed more than 600,000 people and inflicted economic losses estimated at trillions of dollars, the United Nations said Monday, warning that the frequency and impact of such events was set to rise…

According to the report from the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the United States has suffered the highest number of weather-related disasters in the past two decades, but China and India have been the most severely affected, enduring floods that had an impact on billions of people.

Read the full report article here.

Climate Refugees

Another background piece that’s helpful in light of the refugee crisis Europe is facing is this New York Times article on how climate change is likely to become an increasingly significant factor in migration. In fact, the drought in Syria beginning in 2005 may well have precipitated the unrest in that country.

Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the migrant tide, experts warn that the flood is likely to get worse as climate change becomes a driving factor.  Read more.

Naomi Klein’s take on canceling all outside marches and protests at the Climate Talks: Silencing those most impacted by climate change and its monstrous violence

Were you among those who were struck by the terrorist violence in Paris, and then immediately worried that the long-awaited Climate Talks would be derailed as attention shifted to acts of terrorism and the fear reaction following?

On December 3, The Guardian published an article by Naomi Klein that confirms your worst fears. Not only was the opening People’s March cancelled, but all outdoor demonstrations and marches throughout the conference. The world leaders, the sports players, and the Christmas markets would be protected. But indigenous peoples, people from poor countries and people where climate change is already claiming livlihoods and lives who all came to be heard suddenly had no megaphone.

Read the whole revealing article.

Realistic Expectations from the Post Carbon Institute

The Executive Director of the Post Carbon Institute, well-respected for its analytical work on energy for decades, offers a prediction of what will really emerge from the talks and what we will have to do in the coming decades to make a transition.        Read more.