The world’s infrastructure was built for a climate no longer existing
A portion of an article about climate impacting global civilianization as presented in Foreign Policy.
I believe it lays bare how threatened we are everywhere due to a failure to react to even slight variations in global climate. On even a micro-level we see Montana communities pushing back on court rulings on polluting the environment.
It is so small. “Our state of Montana is not impacted by our mining. We still have a clean environment.”
Very true comment in about their issues with pollution are far smaller than other areas and also easier to fix. What about them? Them being Lahaina, Hawaii, a paradise and unknown numbers of people dead or injured. Not the same Hawaii written about by Michener. Everything failed and Lahaina and Maui burned.
Foreign Policy is a great magazine unfortunately it is more expensive than I can afford. If you register, you can get one freebie per month(?) to enjoy.
Global Critical Infrastructure Wasn’t Designed for Climate Change, foreignpolicy.com, Christina Lu and Brawley Benson
Countries have spent decades building critical infrastructure that is now buckling under extreme heat, wildfires, and floods, laying bare just how unprepared the world’s energy and transportation systems are to withstand the volatility of climate change.
These vulnerabilities have been on full display in recent weeks as record-breaking temperatures broil the world, straining power grids, threatening water supplies, and warping roads. July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, with intense heat searing Europe, North Africa, Antarctica, and South America, where it is currently winter. Even the world’s oceans haven’t been spared, with all-time high surface temperatures in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic decimating coral reef systems and threatening marine life.
If regions aren’t being scorched, there’s a good chance that they are underwater. China was drenched by its heaviest downpours in 140 years, which triggered massive floods that killed dozens of people and destroyed crop fields. In Slovenia and Canada, surging floodwaters have battered communities and submerged villages; glacial flooding in Alaska has carried entire homes away. Cities in Spain have been flooded worse than Noah and his brood, while southern Sweden is grappling with its heaviest rains in more than 160 years.
Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute . . .
“It’s just an unbelievable summer. It’s the kind of extreme weather that we climate scientists have been warning about for decades. It just now seems to be happening everywhere, all at once.”
Open Thread August 3, 2023 Climate v Economy, Angry Bear.
Anyone claiming that they, personally, are not responsible for the catastrophe would be correct. This catastrophe has been building for decades, and no single human being is responsible for all of it. None of us individually is to blame; all of us collectively are to blame, as are our ancestors.
Now, it is too late to avert disaster, unless global carbon capture and/or geoengineering intervenes. Not saying that conservation and green energy are not worth pursuing, but alone, they won’t avert the global resource wars that are already heating up and will engulf human civilization by 2050.
Perhaps we should just give up.
Nah, I don’t think so. What have we got to lose?
Must keep trying for the sake of your grandchildren, and their grandchildren, et al.
@Fred,
I certainly never said we should “just give up.” Of course, climate change denialists say we should give up, but I’m not a climate change denialist.
People are actively working on carbon capture and forms of geoengineering, I’ve posted about this in the past.
As I’ve pointed out here previously, ending anthropogenic greenhouse gas generation tomorrow won’t abate global warming for decades because of (a) the long half-lives of greenhouse gases and (b) the forward forcing caused by thawing permafrost, melting methane clathrates and loss of surface albedo. That’s not a prescription to “just give up.” It is a prescription for urgent measures to counteract the mechanisms causing warming.
I just don’t see anything beyond conservation and green energy as worth pursuing. Certainly don’t have any confidence in pie-in-the-sky geoengineering and carbon capture schemes that will take years, billions plus of dollars and technology we don’t currently have to ramp up when we’re not even sure they will work and the expectation on the other side of it is it will at least pay for itself, if not turn a profit
We have to stop doing what we’re doing. It isn’t working
We don’t get to lay down and die …
@Ten,
I haven’t seen anyone recommending that we lay down and die. Have you?
I haven’t seen anyone claiming that geoengineering and/or global carbon capture “will at least pay for itself, if not turn a profit.” Have you?
“We have to stop doing what we’re doing.” If by that you mean stop pouring more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, I agree. But that won’t be enough.
I’ll say it then that solutions should pay for themselves in these circumstances. How quickly and how the benefit gets distributed are good questions to think through carefully in implementing solutions, but it reminds me of reorganizing under bankruptcy where, in every proposed plan, the next dollar spent has a clear payoff. But that shouldn’t be so hard for a lot of big programs if the expected costs of climate change are so high.
@Eric,
“But that shouldn’t be so hard for a lot of big programs if the expected costs of climate change are so high.”
I don’t even know what this means. How does a nation monetize the balance of payments on their contribution to mitigating global climate change?
Joel Eissenberg:
Not saying that conservation and green energy are not worth pursuing, but alone, they won’t avert the global resource wars that are already heating up and will engulf human civilization by 2050.
[ Interesting, but I do not quite understand.
Please explain this further when possible. What “resource wars” are being referred to? ]