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o And major shifts in the distribution of species.
• Recognized that these impacts could materialize during the lifetimes of
people then living or their children or family members, with an array of
negative social impacts, including:
o Particularly harmful effects for the 30% of the world’s population
living within 50 Km of a coastline or in other low-lying areas, who
would face risks of inundation;
o Loss of coastal and estuarine habitats that provide nurseries vital for
food production, resulting in turn in losses of resources and income
for people dependent on those nurseries;
o Additional losses in income and resources from shifts in species
population and from ocean acidification;
o Changes to agriculture, with poorer countries being at greatest risk;
o Changes in air temperature requiring investments in adaptation and
potentially costly changes in the ways people live and work;
o Changes in hydrological cycles and to water supply.
The recognition of these impacts is legally significant in the context of this
inquiry because it demonstrates that the climate harms now being inflicted
upon a growing number of victims and potential plaintiffs were not only
wholly foreseeable to the oil companies—they were, in fact, foreseen.
In a final and equally significant development, The Greenhouse Effect not only
acknowledged the scale of Shell’s own contributions to CO2 emissions, but
calculated them. Moreover, it made this calculation based on the sales of the entire
Shell Group of companies, rather than a single entity, and it took into account not
only Shell’s own operations, but the greenhouse emissions resulting from use of
the fuels it produced and marketed. (Fig. 12)
Fig. 12
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