Forum: Earth is upping volume on its climate change warnings

Published 1:30 am Saturday, October 22, 2022

By Robert Graef / Herald Forum

We just don’t get it, no matter how brutal the message. A man surveying the wreckage of his Florida home said, “This was the worst. There can never be another like it!”

An understandable reaction but a mistaken thought. According to trend lines, conditions are on track to ensure even stronger hurricanes. Related trend lines predict longer droughts, wilder wildfires and fiercer floods.

Chaos. No insurance company is staffed to handle the claims generated by Hurricane Ian, and it is doubtful that they have the billions to cover them if they do. The operative word here is unprecedented; unprecedented in memory, damage and liability, as unprecedented as melting Siberian permafrost, melting polar ice fields, and rising sea levels. Practical planners don’t prepare for the unprecedented, otherwise, Florida’s trashed fleet of fishing boats and yachts would have been safe in Louisiana marinas and more than 120 lives would not have ended abruptly. Unprecedented issues call for unprecedented solutions.

Bean-counters racing to come up with cost estimates for Hurricane Ian won’t include the intangible big one, clouded vision. The song lyric, “On a clear day you can see forever,” couldn’t have occurred to the man viewing the rubble of his home. The trauma of suffering Ian’s wrath did that. Multiply his gloom by the thousands of retirees and business owners sharing his shock to get a feel for what happened to the Florida Dream. Add that insurers are jacking up prices of coverage to cover the cost of Ian.

The ferocity of Hurricane Ian was a product of climate change. As an incident, it owned the news until the next incident pushes Ian below the fold, then to interior pages. The Ian event adds to the evolving analysis that gives us the Big Picture. Do we choose to study it, believe it, and understand its significance to global, national and personal well-being? Are we doing everything in our power to set things right, and change our way of life if that’s what it takes? Do we really get it?

The world needs to receive, understand and respond to this call to action. What’s needed is nothing short of the war-footing that America brought to bear on World War II. If that sounds radical, consider how much greater this threat is than that posed by the Axis Powers. While climate change hits all nations, the most vulnerable suffer the worst, and often first. Some island nations expect to disappear. Most of Bangladesh, being deforested lowland, is becoming seasonally uninhabitable. Monsoonal rains put a third of Pakistan under water while elsewhere, annual rainfall nears zero, aside from rare showers that do more harm than good. Where will the hundreds of millions of displaced people go? And still, we don’t get it.

If you think our Pacific Northwest climate is immune, consider — just days after choking on wildfire smoke — that this year’s rainfall is on track for 57 percent of the area’s average, which may not be enough to recharge municipal wells serving growing populations. Elsewhere, global average sea levels are 8 to 9 inches higher than in 1880. In 2021, global sea levels set a new record for increase, rising 3.8 inches above 1993 levels. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that the rate of global sea rise doubled from 0.06 inches per year throughout most of the 20th century to 0.14 inches per year from 2006 through 2015. The rate of local sea level rise along much of the U.S. coastline is greater than the global average due to erosion, oil and groundwater pumping and subsidence, making high-tide flooding three to nine times more frequent than 50 years ago.

A Marine Insight Foundation study reported that, in spite of 71 percent of the Earth’s surface being water-covered, one of the biggest crises earth faces is the contamination of drinking water. The reason is polluted drinking water sources. Similarly, the contamination and short supply of freshwater sources will also affect irrigation and farming, leading to a food crisis.

Reluctance to act kicks the can down the road in many ways; small minds don’t recognize needs outside private cocoons. Representative government prefers to deal with nit-picking issues before tackling the big stuff, to leave big stuff untended. Tribal minds’ knee-jerk reactions to other tribes’ positions as oppositional scuttles chances for global cooperation. The result; dithering in high places where leaders faced with the unprecedented occupy themselves with the proverbial, “rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

Sweet reason doesn’t jar a nation into meaningful response. What’s needed is the passion of Old Testament prophets in the bodies of leaders of government, industry, military, finance, education, etc. But first those titans must be shocked into understanding that, as controllers of levers of power, their moment to act is when there is still something to save, not later. That calls for hard-edged rhetoric. Put up or shut up. You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem. Help or get out of the way. No two ways about it.

Climate events are breaking records for setting records. The future is here, now, bringing unprecedented challenges that the Big We are obliged to deal with, effectively. Young climate activist Greta Thunberg was on target when she said to the General Assembly regarding the United Nations’ ineffective responses, “How dare you!”

Nothing short of a war-footing can be effective. Governments must tout it, schools must teach it, media must repeat it until citizens mumble it in their sleep. The United States cannot wait for other nations to take the lead. Because of its social and technological standing, America is obliged to lead. Others, recognizing that their vulnerability exceeds ours, will follow out of self-interest but it will take an impressively scaled response to inspire them to follow.

The media’s cooperation is essential. Media must awaken the public to understand that nature’s balanced systems don’t just change degree by degree, but crash when balances are tipped, and that it isn’t known if, once tipped, they can be put back in balance. Media must air happenings such as hurricanes not as isolated incidents, but as evidence of the downward trend in planetary health.

Cornell’s Maria Cristina Garcia said, “I’ve seen projections that put the number of people who will be displaced by climate change as high as 200 million by mid-century. The National Resources Defense Council reported that: “The impacts of climate change in three of the world’s most densely populated developing regions — sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America — could result in the displacement and internal migration of more than 140 million people before 2050.” Where will they go?

Racist xenophobes in Sweden, Italy, Hungary, Turkey, Bosnia, Russia and the U.S. are pulling in the welcome mat over the same climate-induced cause: immigration. While developed nations react by cutting immigration quotas and shutting borders, they ignore the cause. They just don’t get it.

You figure it out. What is the most effective solution? Defending against immigration, or mobilizing to combat climate change? If in doubt, ask your children and grandchildren.

Robert Graef lives in Mill Creek.

Herald Forum

The Herald Forum invites community members to submit essays on topics of importance and interest to them. Essays typically are between 400 and 600 words in length, although exceptions for longer pieces can be made. To submit essays or for more information about the Herald Forum, write Herald Opinion editor Jon Bauer at jbauer@heraldnet.com or call him at 425-339-3466.