(Pics from this blog)
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| we want climate action now |
Let me explain what I mean by “accelerating pulsation of disaster.” Take the example of California’s wildfires. They’re the direct result
of climate change. Hotter temperatures, hotter oceans, bigger storms,
more lightning, drier vegetation — bang! A near certainty of historic
fires igniting."
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| Wildfire emergency |
"So California’s burning…again. Just like it was last year, and the year before that, and so on. In a few months, it’ll be Australia’s turn to be hit by megafires, all over again. They’ll be worse than last year, at least if we average it all over a decade or so. That’s because, of course, fire is seasonal. And as we head into the age of catastrophe, “megafire season” will become a part of our lives. The world will develop Fire Belts, of which California and Australia are becoming a part."
"Then there are Flood Belts. While the pandemic raged, much of Asia flooded. The West didn’t take much notice — even though China’s largest dam is now at it’s limits.
And yet the megafloods Asia just experienced are just like megafires —
natural phenomena that are getting worse on a seasonal, yearly cycle.
Within a decade or two, these floods will also threaten habitability.
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| Expect much greater sea level rise as land-ice melts |
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"Are you beginning to get what I mean by “accelerating pulsation of disaster” yet? As we head into the age of catastrophe, a new range of calamities will become our dismal new normal. They’ll recur, in cycles. Only each time the cycle spins, they’ll get worse and worse. Megafires, megafloods, pandemics, extinctions."
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| Sea Rise will flood cities |
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The accelerating pulsation of disaster. Life
is going to feel scary, strange, dislocating, anxiety-inducing. As soon
as this disaster ebbs — phew, the megafire’s over! — here comes another
one. Now it’s megaflood season. Now it’s Covid season. Christ, now
there’s a new pandemic. What the? You and I were born live at the very
tail end of a golden age of human stability. That age is now over, and
the transition into the age of apocalypse is going to feel deeply
frightening. 2020 was just the beginning. It’s going to get much, much
worse, before — if — it ever gets better.
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| Melting Land ice on Greenland |
As all
those cycles of catastrophe, operating at annual, semiannual, decadal
scales get worse and worse, ultimately, our systems will begin to
buckle, and then break. Faster and harder than we think.
Think of California right about now. A wildfire is bad. A respiratory pandemic is really bad. But megafires during a respiratory pandemic? What now? They have conflicting objectives: quarantine and stay at home, versus evacuate and firefight."
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| Heatwaves kill |
"They then face a stark dilemma. To
fight accelerating waves of natural calamity, fire, flood, drought,
famine, then saps resources that are needed to invest in tomorrow. We
fight that megafire, we try to build a barrier against tomorrow’s mega
flood. There go all those schools, hospitals, universities, libraries,
parks, roads, high-speed trains we wanted to build, expand, renew.
Simply fending off catastrophe will take a larger and large share of our resources. That
leaves less left over to invest in the things which really improve
people’s quality of life, whether healthcare, education, retirement, and
so on.
What happens as a result of that? Well, people’s qualities of life fall. Depression and frustration and unhappiness grow. And the predictable consequence of that is more extremism. Discontented masses tend to turn to demagogues, who blame all of a society’s problems on hated minorities. The age of catastrophe will be a boon to tomorrow’s Trumps.
And yet even all this just takes to about the mid 2030s or so. After that? That’s when the real fireworks begin."
"By about then, the limits of our civilization’s fundamental systems will have been breached.
Insurance and banking systems won’t be able to cover the losses of
burning states and flooded cities. They’ll go bankrupt, and probably
demand huge bailouts. Those bankruptcies will have a devastating
consequence. Not just the lack of credit, but a sharp rise in the cost
of it. Translation, you’re probably living in debt right now — whether
mortgage, credit card debt, car loans, student debt, medical debt, or
all of the above — and the interest rates on all that are going to
skyrocket. Somebody has to pay for the risk and costs of all this sudden
catastrophe. And it’s probably going to be you, in the hidden form of
paying massively more interest on all that debt you already can’t pay off."
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| Properties will become uninsurable |
As
insurance and financial systems go broke, and the costs of accessing
money and credit spike, huge waves of businesses will close. Most small
businesses exist on razor-thin margins, from restaurants and bars to
nail salons and hobby shops. When their rents double and the interest on
their loans triples and they can’t get any more credit — at exactly the
same time as their customer base is falling apart? Bang! They go broke,
too. And all the millions of people they employ — small businesses are still the heart of the economy — are unemployed. The cycle of depression and poverty accelerates."
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"This is not a drill, my friends. It’s
time to stop acting like it is, burying our pretty vacant little heads
in Netflix-and-chill and Instagram envy and the latest gender pronoun
and Fakebook friends. That’s all, history will rightly say, garbage for
the human mind and spirit. This is it. We’re not going to get another chance." "
The Observer view on the climate catastrophe facing Earth : The Guardian
#heatwaves, climate catastrophe, depression, economic impact, #cambio-climatico, #climate crisis, #climateaction, #criminalesclimáticosdelacárcel, #firestorms, #jailclimatecriminals, #climateemergency,
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