How you can REALLY help the Super Typhoon Haiyan relief effort

The UK Government has just announced that it will be giving £10 million towards the current relief effort in the Philippines and we are also being invited to give generously. However, whatever we give will be a drop in the ocean compared to the massive economic benefits that we in the developed world have gained from exploiting fossil fuels over the past 50 years.

In 2009, Nick Stern said that poor countries – the least responsible for climate change – will be hit earliest and hardest by hurricanes and storms.

Although there is no consensus yet over the link between the current rate of global warming and this latest Super Typhoon, hurricane researchers have said that Haiyan is an example of the type of extreme storm that may become more frequent as the climate continues to warm... 

Last year, Naderev Saño, the Philippines delegate to the Doha climate change conference stated that each destructive typhoon season costs his country 2% of GDP, and the reconstruction costs a further 2%, which means a loss of almost 5% of the Philippine's economy every year to storms.

Up until now, the Philippine GDP expansion has been impressive. Based on the most recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) assessment, GDP growth was 6.6% last year, a rate the agency ranks as better than most of the region. The IMF had forecast Philippine GDP expansion at 6% in 2013 and 5.5% in 2014. It is highly likely now that GDP will contract late this year and into next, and that contraction could be horrible. 

If you want to really help the Haiyan relief effort and help prevent monster typhoons and hurricanes from becoming more common in future, in addition to making a donation, you could do the following:

• Drastically reduce your carbon emissions – if you are using gas-fired central heating, you are probably releasing at least 7 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, it will be at least twice this amount if you are using oil or LPG.
• Switch to a green energy supplier.
• Campaign against fracking - this technology will undermine the UK's greenhouse gas emissions reduction target (i.e. 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050) through the methane leaked or vented from shale gas operations and the proliferation of gas-fired power stations.
• Support the Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign - fossil fuels received subsidies worth over $500 billion (£311 billion) in 2011, according to ODI.
• Sign Philippine's Climate Commissioner, Yeb Sano's petition here...