The US must adapt to the climate impacts already here
The one-two punch of record wildfire and hurricane seasons has overwhelmed the United States, which is already struggling with COVID-19.
The one-two punch of record wildfire and hurricane seasons has overwhelmed the United States, which is already struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Variations of that story are playing out all over the world: Bangladesh is battling its heaviest rainfall in years. Central and Western African floods are wiping out access to clean water and sanitation. And parts of Western Europe are feeling their hottest September days ever recorded.
The need for climate action has never been clearer. And the immediate socio-economic impacts of fires and floods, compounded by a pandemic, highlight the urgent need for climate adaptation.
Climate adaptation measures — such as resilient infrastructure, coastal protections, and climate-resilient crops — are often overlooked, accounting for only about one-fifth of global climate finance.
But these measures save lives, prevent destruction, and allow communities to get back on their feet more quickly. For example, disaster planning and predictive data sparked evacuations that softened the deadly impact of Cyclone Amphan, a Category 5 storm that struck Bangladesh earlier this year.
Climate adaptation also makes financial sense: Globally, if we spent $1.8 trillion in adaptation from 2020 to 2030, we could generate over $7 trillion in net benefits.
And not doing anything will rack up heavy costs. Should emissions continue to climb, the world could see $50 trillion in climate-related economic damages by 2050.
The United States is already paying for its inaction, spending billions of dollars every year on disasters made worse by climate change. In 2019, the U.S. had 14 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. Last month alone, the U.S. had four billion-dollar weather disasters.
Even President Donald Trump’s administration recognizes the problem: A new report by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency that regulates markets, warns of a climate-fueled financial crisis.
Of course, we can’t just wait for the next wildfires and hurricane to act on climate. The slow-moving nature of climate action around the world, especially in the U.S., landed us where we are today.
Though we’ve dragged our feet, there’s still time to turn things around. But we must do so quickly.
“The window of time available is short, but the pandemic has also demonstrated that transformative changes are possible when they must be made,” said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity, in a press release that accompanied a recent U.N. biodiversity report.
It’s still possible to hit global net-zero emissions by 2050, too — if we’re willing to spend the money to do so. And how we spend that money also makes a difference: We need adaptation investments to deal with the crises at hand right now, as well as mitigation investments to prevent these crises from getting worse in the future.
It’s easy to be pessimistic about the future, especially in what feels like an apocalyptic year. But ignoring or lying about the climate crisis, as is the strategy for many politicians, isn’t going to make climate change go away. In fact, it’ll just make it worse.
So, in addition to mitigation and adaptation, another climate strategy exists, one at the individual level. As Patagonia’s new campaign not so subtly implies, we also need to vote out the assholes fueling the problem.