The arrival of summer in the northern hemisphere ushers in, as it does every year, natural disasters caused by the progressive warming of our planet. At the moment it’s tornadoes in Chicago, which you may not have heard about unless you live in the area, but tomorrow it will be hurricanes, storms or huge wildfires.
The reason is as simple as it is sadly predictable: our emissions, which continue to increase given the misguided investment priorities of governments everywhere have doubled the amount of heat trapped and retained by our planet over the last fourteen years, generating ever-increasing climate instability. Each year will be worse.
We know that the increase in natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and fires is related to the worsening climate emergency. The science-based evidence is there, beyond discussion. Last year, we knew that the Atlantic hurricane season was going to break the records of recent years, and it did: so much so that the system for naming hurricanes had to be changed. Coupled with the disasters in the Brazilian Amazon and Australia, the picture is ominous, but one that many still insist on denying, despite the acceleration of the phenomenon: more emissions generate more natural disasters, and more natural disasters generate more emissions. And this year, say the forecasts, records may be broken again.
Countries such as Australia, Brazil or the United States are climate emergency laboratories, but the symptoms can appear suddenly, anywhere in the world in any number of forms: we have driven the planet to this level of instability. This year, in addition to hurricanes and storms, the United States is in the midst of a once-in-a-millennium drought, which is increasing the number of fires and their intensity. There is talk that the climate emergency will see the largest migration in the history of the United States, just as it is already driving the largest migration in history to the United States from Central America.
While many people can’t see the connection when they hear news of such catastrophes, scientists know perfectly well that everything is related: not even a pandemic managed to curb our emissions, and the “return to normality” could make the situation even more unsustainable, much sooner than many thought.
Could the increased frequency of climate disasters create an unsustainable situation for some governments that could force them to make drastic decisions? Right now, that is practically our only chance to escape the spiral, because the challenge is no longer in 2050, but now. And still we prefer to pretend that nothing is happening, that we don’t need to change our habits and that it is simply “bad luck”, some kind of coincidence.
Our only hope is technology. We have to change our way of life, stop extracting and burning fossil fuels, drastically reduce our emissions at whatever cost, and try to stabilize the drift of a planet our activity has destabilized. The technology exists, and it is up to the challenge, but if we want to survive, we’ll need to start using it now. And if this article seems apocalyptic, let’s talk when you reread it in a few months’ time.
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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans.
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