So I Told You There Was A Chance

Back in 2019 when I wrote my first climate op-ed “Incrementalism is Killing Us When It Comes to Climate Change,” I ticked off a long list of catastrophic warming benchmarks and attendant extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change. And with the exception of CO2 emissions in the “lost” year of 2020, the nearly four years since then has seen those benchmarks, trendlines and extreme events eclipsed and reaching new heights.

Yet despite all of this, in my last piece in 2022 I tried to be a bit more positive about the collective fate of humanity, if only as a shoutout to the motivated and self-aware young people staring down the blackhole of their future existence. In that piece, “So You’re Telling Me There’s A Chance,” I suggested that perhaps we can still change our current momentum towards collapse and actually engage globally on the issues confronting us; the biodiversity and climate crisis fueled by the over-consumptive, debt-fueled and market-dictated “growth at all costs” neoliberal paradigm that is our late-stage capitalist, global system. Only half in jest, I put the odds at creating meaningful change at about one-in-a-million, but still, at least there was a chance! Now barely nine months later, as we enter the second half of 2023, I feel that perhaps I was being overly generous in that assessment.

As those of us stateside and elsewhere again see climate chaos predictably unfolding in the — surprise! — one-in-a thousand year storms hitting upstate New York and Vermont, in the broken heat records and blistering temperatures in Europe, Asia and parts of the Southwest and as the largest wildfires in Canadian history continue to burn across its provinces, while the smoke from their flames impacts the vision and breathing of geographically disparate people from the midwest to New York City, it’s just business as usual (BAU) for governments, corporations and industry, though with some greenwashing thrown in to assuage the haters (i.e. those paying attention to the anemic track record of results). The governor of New York, in a typically tardy acknowledgement (though at least acknowledged, as opposed to criminally derelict misinformation spouted by administrations in Texas and other deep red states) that linked destructive weather extremes and the climate crisis, proclaimed that these events are now the “new normal,” which might make people sit up and pay more attention. The reality? This dire sounding proclamation pales in comparison to what the future holds in store for us.

Author’s note on August 14th, 2023 — In the month since I published this story, thousands of tourist were evacuated from the Greek island of Rhodes in Greece’s largest evacuation ever (ultimately resulting in at least 7 deaths), 30 people died in massive fires burning in Algeria, the ocean off the coast of Miami registered a temperature of over 101°F and a previously unthinkable fire calamity hit the tropical island of Maui in Hawaii, resulting in billions of dollars of damage, near total destruction of the historic town of Lahaina and over 96 deaths with many still unaccounted for — this is already the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in over a century.

Indeed, far from being the new normal, which would at least give us some measuring stick to adjust to — a state that as bad as it is, currently seems to limit the death tolls to the hundreds and thousands of people and billions of dollars in damage — the reality is that we are just at one “new normal” datapoint on an exponentially sloping upwards curve of “new normals” that will be resetting every month, year, decade and century of the future human habitation on this planet until our human-produced greenhouse gas emissions are eliminated. Paradoxically, every decade will be hotter, drier, and, intermittently, wetter, the latter a problem because the “wet” comes all at once and the hot and dry part lasts way too long, is more extreme and will encroach on areas previously unaccustomed to such climate — especially problematic for feeding a global population from major breadbaskets that had consistently enjoyed temperate climates with reliable water sources. And that’s before we factor in continued sea level rise, rainforest desertification, as well as continued gulf and jet stream anomalies generating heretofore unprecedented regional weather events. And if we manage to trigger climate tipping points with our BAU, future emissions cuts won’t do much to limit the supercharged destruction that will render many parts of our built world uninhabitable. This is the world of extremes that our climate system is moving towards as it seeks to find a new homeostasis in the energy imbalance affecting the planet. But the pain and suffering meted out by these extremes will be the game changer that finally disrupts our myopic BAU bubble. When financial damages start tallying up in the trillions rather than mere billions and when human lives lost are in the hundreds of thousands, millions or tens of millions, our current system of insured, intertwined economic and political shared interests will no longer function, even as it is open for debate that it functions right now.

If not this year, then certainly next year will see the new record for the hottest year ever recorded, even as June just became the hottest June ever recorded (Author’s note on August 14th, 2023 — July just became the hottest month since accurate record keeping started). Indeed, it is likely that we will temporarily surpass that 1.5 degree threshold, so talked about in climate circles, in the next 18 months, even if the multi-year average threshold might last into the early 2030s (a date that alarmingly keeps getting pushed forward). It’s no surprise that in getting to this point we’ve experienced the 9 hottest years on record in the last 9 years and the last 46 years straight (since 1977!) of temperatures above the 20th century average. While a hotter planet bakes some areas and turns them into unforgiving desertscapes, again paradoxically the atmosphere now holds more water moisture, causing dramatic floods, intense rain-bombs, stronger hurricanes and other not-good-for-human-built infrastructure extreme weather events. Our civilization is predicated on a certain amount of insurable, predictable destruction based on historical data, but we have now entered a world that cannot be predicted with historical data. At least not since humankind started farming and building cities, limiting its ability to just move their animal hide shelters to higher ground.

The last time we had a temperature increase like now was during the Eemian interglacial period some 125,000 years ago and the last time we had as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was during the Pliocene epoch over three million years ago. Past interglacials were generally triggered by long-term processes known as Milankovitch cycles, which took thousands of years to transition from a cold to a warm period (as opposed to deranged, century-long, fossil-fuel burning bonanza). And it’s key to remember that temperature increase lags behind the carbon dioxide increase, so that the 400 parts-per-million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere back then (we are at 420 ppm now) was measurable on a planet 4 to 5 degrees Celsius warmer than ours is currently. To put this in perspective, recall that scientists are falling over one another exhorting us to limit warming to the “safe” level of 1.5 degrees. We are still on track this century for warming closer to double that and it’s absolutely not out of the question that we don’t triple it. With additional CO2 emissions nearly guaranteed for the years ahead based behavior and commitments to date, warming will continue above even those thresholds in the centuries to come, making it questionable if humanity will be here to witness the results.

But don’t worry, because the next Conference of Parties on climate change will be hosted by Dubai with its vast oil reserves, so undoubtedly tough decisions on leaving fossil fuels in the ground will be made without a moment to spare! Lol. Take a minute to savor that thought. Meanwhile, at the national level we are consumed by factually bereft populism and polarizing culture wars, while geopolitics and actual war engulf us at the global level. Given all this, it can seem like the only meaningful work to adapt and mitigate against the climate and biodiversity crisis is being done locally/regionally and that’s not likely to change for the foreseeable future. That doesn’t mean we can collectively give up on a national/international amelioration of this problem because indeed, the scary numbers will only significantly recede when that comes to pass — but the building blocks will be put in place one community, one city, one state at a time. Even one additional person comprehending our reality and committing to change — i.e. you — one person at a time in the wealthy Global North making big behavioral changes will matter to mitigate harm. Unlike some vested interests bent on extracting maximum wealth out of our required energy transition while whistling a disingenuously happy tune, I won’t lie to you and tell you that it will ever be enough to avert serious consequences, because it won’t be. But if done collectively, it will be enough to avert human extinction and it might even be enough to create a more just and ecologically aligned world for its remaining inhabitants. Deciding to pull your head out of the flooded landscape and smell the wildfire smoke is both better for your emotional state and for the state of the planet.

See, I told you there was a chance… it’s not all doom and gloom! Make it happen.