Across the world climate change seems to have arrived earlier than
expected. There are world-class
athletes with bodies trained for endurance and strength breaking down
from the extreme heat visited on the Tokyo Olympics by mother
nature. There are the continuing
wildfires in the American West that take out entire towns. The
drought there is so bad that states
are thinking about paying farmers NOT to irrigate their crops as a
conservation strategy.
One of the other effects of climate change is heavier rains and
devastating floods. Recent
floods in Germany were caused by rains characterized as
once-in-a-millennium, rains which, for example, killed more than 200 people and caused $1.5 billion
in damage to the German railway network. But, of course, statements
about once-in-a-fill-in-the-blank rains or droughts seem less and less
relevant in the age of climate change as what we call extraordinarily
destructive weather just morphs into "the weather."
Once-in-a-millennium
rains also visited parts of China recently dumping in just three
days an entire year's
rainfall on one town of 12 million.
The infrastructure we have built and the way we work and live are simply
not designed for these extremes. Our systems are breaking down under the
pressure of climate-change-induced extreme weather.
But the scariest thing is that all of the incidents I cited above could
happen all over again next year and the next year and the next after that
in the same places as extreme weather worsens and becomes just "weather."
In California, 2020 marked the
worst fire season ever in the state. But 2021
is now on pace to be even worse.
We are now reaching tipping points in the direct, destructive and
destabilizing effects of climate on humans and their infrastructure. We
can no longer simply ignore these effects. We can no longer simply bask
obliviously in the sunshine of unseasonably warm winter days without
acknowledging their terrible message as
many of my fellow Washingtonians did when I first arrived in the city in
2018.
There are hidden tipping points waiting for us to hit them. And, there
are ones that are out in the open and well-studied. When most viewers
watched the 2004 fictional film "The
Day After Tomorrow," they marvelled at the special effects while
dismissing the collapsed timeline for a dramatic, sudden and overwhelming
freeze in Europe and North America—within a week in the film. The freeze
depicted results from the collapse of the Gulf Stream which pumps heat
from tropical waters northward, keeping the American and Canadian eastern
coasts and much of northern Europe far warmer than they would otherwise
be. A cessation of this current is believed to be one of the possible
outcomes of climate change.
What scientists now suspect is that this
critical river of water and heat in the Atlantic Ocean is not only
slowing, but also losing its stability. The fear is that the current
could shut down unexpectedly and suddenly and that effects would be felt
within months—not as quickly as in a Hollywood movie, but quickly enough
to create catastrophic consequences for the food supply, economic activity
and human migration even while all those reading this sentence are still
alive. And that is just one key tipping point.
Will we humans rally and address this and other looming climate threats?
Some will try and even try very hard. But to truly reverse climate change
now so late in the game would require draconian measures that few people
would tolerate. For those who say that we will adapt, we now have an
emerging picture of just what that adaptation involves. For
many "adaptation" will simply mean ruin. For the truly unlucky, it will
mean death.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider, and many other places. He
is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He is currently a fellow of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.
|