For decades, scientists warned that continued burning of oil, gas, and coal would have devastating climate impacts.
Those impacts are now being felt around the world.
Climate change is driving extreme weather By all accounts, the last few years have been brutal for the climate – and for the humans and other living things within it. Around the globe, heat records have been shattered. Floods have soaked Pakistan, Libya and numerous other countries, in torrents that destroyed property and claimed lives.
Powerful hurricanes have blasted the usual land targets, like the eastern coasts of India and the United States. And there have been strange, once-in-a-generation events, like a tropical storm that hit California.
The science of what is happening is clear. For more than 100 years, scientists have known that large quantities of greenhouse gases, released from the burning of fossil fuels, go up into the atmosphere and heat the planet. That heating leads to frequent and more extreme alterations in weather patterns. In that sense, climate change can be thought of as the Great Accelerator.
The heat wave that was always going to be hot is even hotter and hangs around much longer, forming a suffocating dome over large chunks of land. The periodic drought that was already going to happen ends up being drier and lasting longer, stripping moisture from the land and leaving cracks in its wake. The tropical storm that was always going to form in the ocean, but might have subsided before, more frequently turns into a powerful hurricane that pummels all it touches and leaves major flooding.
The pace of extreme weather events is dizzying, so much so that governments, scientists, and humanitarian groups find themselves responding to multiple crises at once. The extremes have heightened awareness of climate change, even among people who have denied it, or had the means to insulate themselves, or just wanted to look away.
And the impact is coming into sharp focus.
Climate impacts are felt everywhere, but not felt equally No place on Earth is immune to the extremes of climate change, but those extremes are not experienced equally.
Faced with rising seas, a coastal dweller with enough money can pay to raise their house, or simply decide to buy another house further inland. Meanwhile, a poor person may have no way to fortify their home and thus no choice but to watch it get washed away – or worse, get washed away themselves in the flooding.
Climate change didn’t create the inequality but did make it worse.
One of the most visceral manifestations of climate inequality is migration. Every year, the UN estimates that more than 21 million people around the world move because extreme weather has made life inhospitable where they live.
Floods have taken their homes. Drought has shriveled their crops. Incessant heat, and no way to escape it, such as with life-saving air conditioning, has put them at risk of death.
The extremes hit the most vulnerable hardest, but impacts are widespread – no one is completely spared. One of the best examples: wildfires that burn for months push smoke across countries and even sometimes across the globe, making the air dangerous to breathe even while doing simple things like taking a walk.
The extremes also have financial costs. Each year, countries around the world are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to prepare for and rebuild after bouts of extreme weather. (The Conversation)
