Much of the concern about climate change is around the idea of “the big impact,” a single, colossal disaster that dramatically impacts everyone on the planet, much like the scenario depicted in the movie The Day After Tomorrow. While such an event could happen, it’s not the most likely way we will be impacted by our changing climate. A more plausible scenario involves ‘death by a thousand cuts,’ with numerous smaller impacts occurring simultaneously or in close succession. Each impact on its own might be manageable, but collectively they could sum up to a significant problem.
Great article, but I think it underplays the scale of impact and the forced adaptions taking place right now. Millions of people are already homeless and rebuilding their lives from climate-driven disasters ... and for the most part, that rebuilding is without support of any kind. Yes, the US has experienced heat and smoke this year, and yes those things are bad, but the media's (and therfore everyone else) failure to acknowledge the sustained and cummulative impact from rolling climate catastrophes around the world is extreme ignorance. Rome is already burning.
Yes indeed. Economists call these thousand cuts "external costs". The IMF says we subsidize the fossil fuel industry $5.9 trillion a year in direct subsidies and external costs (mostly external costs). External costs are a symptom of a market failure - a market that is failing to operate as efficiently as possible to maximize benefits. The most direct, comprehensive, and fair way to address this market failure is Carbon Fee and Dividend. Everyone: please learn about it, join a group that is helping create the political will to enable Congress to do it, and advocate for it among your friends and family. Here's a good place to start: http://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend.
I am reminded of the silly Monty Python skit where the knight confronts the king and is progressively dismembered while staying defiant. “It is but a flesh wound!” he bellows as his dismembered arm lies at his feet. Denial is not bound by sanity.
Change happens using the same path as the grief cycle: denial, bargaining, anger, surrender, and acceptance. Logically we should be feeling the pain of climate change wounds and the financial pinch of accruing costs, but we are looping in a cycle of denial, bargaining, and anger. The question becomes what level of pain will knock us (and the rest of the natural world) to our knees and accept responsibility for our fate?
Looping in the first three stages of change allows us to play the victim and shift the blame to others which is easy and addictive. But, inevitably a reckoning happens where the wound is felt deeply and personally. The pain sears through the fog of illusion bringing us out of the clouds and back into our humanity. I shudder to think what must happen to bring us down to earth but the power of denial is formidable and we now have a lot of distractions from our pain. Monty Python showed us the bounds of our absurdity. We may just exceed them.
Yes, the adaptations are expensive. In the last 20 years, dozens of my neighbors and coworkers have installed air conditioning, which they admit they previously did not need (I'm still a hold-out.). It's thousands of dollars for an install and an additional $40, $60 or more a month in the summer paying for the electricity. Also it robs you of the pleasant breezes and bird songs when you just have your windows open.
So many salient points here (and resonated extra given that I just opened my last post with thoughts on the Day After Tomorrow as well... definitely in the zeitgeist for way too urgent reasons).
If climate deniers are right and the global community of scientists, as represented by the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science ... IPCC is wrong, why don't they present their science in the scientific literature and win Nobel prizes and the everlasting thanks of governments and humanity?
Trying to get us to follow them down rabbit holes is great fun I'm sure, but some of us have grandchildren whom the oil billionaires are willing to see perish before their time is up.
You can argue till the cows come home but the simple fact is more CO2 in the atmosphere causes Earth to retain more energy from the Sun, and more energy in the climate system means worse weather.
"Contrary to how it is typically protrayed by climate dismissives, adaptation is not free."
Is this a deliberate strawman? Who would ever claim that adaptation is free?
I'd claim that adaptation is cheaper than prevention. I'd also claim that we (essentially all people worldwide) have already chosen not to do prevention, so adaptation is forced on us.
I know you've claimed that reports from Berkeley and Princeton show an affordable path to prevention by getting to Net Zero, or at least 90% of the way to Net Zero, at no cost. But neither of these reports actually claim this: the Berkeley report explicitly claims that continued subsidies for renewable energy would be required, and the Princeton report calls for a magic solution: practical large-scale carbon sequestration at no cost.
People are the single root source of resource imbalance. World population has tripled in my lifetime (80 years). It may halve in the next 80. If that happens without a war it will be amazing. But note, that only where women are repressed do populations grow out of control.
History tells us that civilisations fall apart quickly. We are doing what the Romans did. They worried about the economy and not the fundamentals.
Dr. Dressler, I agree with your "thousand cuts" metaphor. For the immediate future, as you and your readers point out, adaptation will be most available to those who can afford it. I believe we have a moral obligation to give aid to the rest. Given my 80th percentile age, I now acknowledge, is to my advantage. My fear lies with my grandchildren: fortunately they are not typical consumers. A huge global obstacle, in my opinion, is "leadership". Regardless what commitments delegates make at the numerous conferences, putting the policies in place that are required not forthcoming. Why? Politically and economically net-zero is going to be very costly. How can we insure, food, water, shelter and security? That is to be decided, or not: https://lzed.substack.com/p/if-you-eat-youre-involved-in-agriculture
I am not so confident that the world or history is that ‘fair.’ Big Tobacco paid its fines, dusted itself off, and keeps making money even today. “It was just business…” they will claim.
Storms and 'un-seasonal' cold or warm snaps have got to be affecting food growing. Many staples produced in subtropical and temperate climates are annual crops, grown between spring and fall. How many acres lost to floods, to super-heat? To frost? In the tropics, though there are two rice crops per year, millions more people are dependent on those two crops. Death by a thousand cut indeed.
I think this is a good example of how people really don't take climate change seriously. Instead of paying for a gym membership maybe move out of Texas to say Duluth, MN. By in large people won't do something like this. Very few people are willing to sacrifice to limit climate change. How many liberals that talk about climate change have made any meaningful reduction in CO2 that cost them comforts? Having the money and buying a Tesla doesn't count. Live in a smaller home. Travel less or not at all. Etc. It largely doesn't happen. The poor have few if any options, the rich do and still do nothing. https://briefedbydata.substack.com/
OK.... I gotta push back on the whole Phoenix thing. The vaaaaast majority of people in Phoenix live in apartment complexes that are all relatively new... and have central air. The vast majority of people living in actual houses... are rich... in PV/Scottsdale (though, technically not Phoenix).
Also: the average cost to run an 8,000 BTU window A/C unit **24 hours a day** is $2.05 (or as little as 50¢ if confined to one room w/ intermittent usage). If someone can't spare 50¢-$2 a day because they won't be able to eat [despite the citywide free "Home Delivered Meal Program" for seniors & the disabled], I kinda question how they managed to have a roof over their head at all. Sounds sus.
In the short run only the poor are doomed.
In the long run (50 years) we are all doomed.
In the history of man, it has never been an advantage to be over 65, until now.
Great article, but I think it underplays the scale of impact and the forced adaptions taking place right now. Millions of people are already homeless and rebuilding their lives from climate-driven disasters ... and for the most part, that rebuilding is without support of any kind. Yes, the US has experienced heat and smoke this year, and yes those things are bad, but the media's (and therfore everyone else) failure to acknowledge the sustained and cummulative impact from rolling climate catastrophes around the world is extreme ignorance. Rome is already burning.
Thanks for the great article!
"climate change is imposing a tax on us."
Yes indeed. Economists call these thousand cuts "external costs". The IMF says we subsidize the fossil fuel industry $5.9 trillion a year in direct subsidies and external costs (mostly external costs). External costs are a symptom of a market failure - a market that is failing to operate as efficiently as possible to maximize benefits. The most direct, comprehensive, and fair way to address this market failure is Carbon Fee and Dividend. Everyone: please learn about it, join a group that is helping create the political will to enable Congress to do it, and advocate for it among your friends and family. Here's a good place to start: http://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend.
I am reminded of the silly Monty Python skit where the knight confronts the king and is progressively dismembered while staying defiant. “It is but a flesh wound!” he bellows as his dismembered arm lies at his feet. Denial is not bound by sanity.
Change happens using the same path as the grief cycle: denial, bargaining, anger, surrender, and acceptance. Logically we should be feeling the pain of climate change wounds and the financial pinch of accruing costs, but we are looping in a cycle of denial, bargaining, and anger. The question becomes what level of pain will knock us (and the rest of the natural world) to our knees and accept responsibility for our fate?
Looping in the first three stages of change allows us to play the victim and shift the blame to others which is easy and addictive. But, inevitably a reckoning happens where the wound is felt deeply and personally. The pain sears through the fog of illusion bringing us out of the clouds and back into our humanity. I shudder to think what must happen to bring us down to earth but the power of denial is formidable and we now have a lot of distractions from our pain. Monty Python showed us the bounds of our absurdity. We may just exceed them.
Very well said and well written.
A key part of the problem emerges from your story. In the short term, capitalism thrives on environmental degradation and disaster.
When the elderly walkers can't enjoy the great outdoors for free any more then the gym owner sells them subscriptions.
It's so sad.
Yes, the adaptations are expensive. In the last 20 years, dozens of my neighbors and coworkers have installed air conditioning, which they admit they previously did not need (I'm still a hold-out.). It's thousands of dollars for an install and an additional $40, $60 or more a month in the summer paying for the electricity. Also it robs you of the pleasant breezes and bird songs when you just have your windows open.
So many salient points here (and resonated extra given that I just opened my last post with thoughts on the Day After Tomorrow as well... definitely in the zeitgeist for way too urgent reasons).
If climate deniers are right and the global community of scientists, as represented by the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science ... IPCC is wrong, why don't they present their science in the scientific literature and win Nobel prizes and the everlasting thanks of governments and humanity?
Trying to get us to follow them down rabbit holes is great fun I'm sure, but some of us have grandchildren whom the oil billionaires are willing to see perish before their time is up.
You can argue till the cows come home but the simple fact is more CO2 in the atmosphere causes Earth to retain more energy from the Sun, and more energy in the climate system means worse weather.
What we see happening is what we would expect.
"Contrary to how it is typically protrayed by climate dismissives, adaptation is not free."
Is this a deliberate strawman? Who would ever claim that adaptation is free?
I'd claim that adaptation is cheaper than prevention. I'd also claim that we (essentially all people worldwide) have already chosen not to do prevention, so adaptation is forced on us.
I know you've claimed that reports from Berkeley and Princeton show an affordable path to prevention by getting to Net Zero, or at least 90% of the way to Net Zero, at no cost. But neither of these reports actually claim this: the Berkeley report explicitly claims that continued subsidies for renewable energy would be required, and the Princeton report calls for a magic solution: practical large-scale carbon sequestration at no cost.
Putting all that out there without mentioning the urban heat islands affecting all cities is advocacy, not science in any form.
https://texastrees.org/how-the-urban-heat-island-is-impacting-north-texas/
w.
Replacing eco unfriendly vehicles, building wind turbines, changing farming practices, carbon capture.
It means starvation,
People are the single root source of resource imbalance. World population has tripled in my lifetime (80 years). It may halve in the next 80. If that happens without a war it will be amazing. But note, that only where women are repressed do populations grow out of control.
History tells us that civilisations fall apart quickly. We are doing what the Romans did. They worried about the economy and not the fundamentals.
Had they had a more hollistic app
Dr. Dressler, I agree with your "thousand cuts" metaphor. For the immediate future, as you and your readers point out, adaptation will be most available to those who can afford it. I believe we have a moral obligation to give aid to the rest. Given my 80th percentile age, I now acknowledge, is to my advantage. My fear lies with my grandchildren: fortunately they are not typical consumers. A huge global obstacle, in my opinion, is "leadership". Regardless what commitments delegates make at the numerous conferences, putting the policies in place that are required not forthcoming. Why? Politically and economically net-zero is going to be very costly. How can we insure, food, water, shelter and security? That is to be decided, or not: https://lzed.substack.com/p/if-you-eat-youre-involved-in-agriculture
I am not so confident that the world or history is that ‘fair.’ Big Tobacco paid its fines, dusted itself off, and keeps making money even today. “It was just business…” they will claim.
Storms and 'un-seasonal' cold or warm snaps have got to be affecting food growing. Many staples produced in subtropical and temperate climates are annual crops, grown between spring and fall. How many acres lost to floods, to super-heat? To frost? In the tropics, though there are two rice crops per year, millions more people are dependent on those two crops. Death by a thousand cut indeed.
I think this is a good example of how people really don't take climate change seriously. Instead of paying for a gym membership maybe move out of Texas to say Duluth, MN. By in large people won't do something like this. Very few people are willing to sacrifice to limit climate change. How many liberals that talk about climate change have made any meaningful reduction in CO2 that cost them comforts? Having the money and buying a Tesla doesn't count. Live in a smaller home. Travel less or not at all. Etc. It largely doesn't happen. The poor have few if any options, the rich do and still do nothing. https://briefedbydata.substack.com/
OK.... I gotta push back on the whole Phoenix thing. The vaaaaast majority of people in Phoenix live in apartment complexes that are all relatively new... and have central air. The vast majority of people living in actual houses... are rich... in PV/Scottsdale (though, technically not Phoenix).
Also: the average cost to run an 8,000 BTU window A/C unit **24 hours a day** is $2.05 (or as little as 50¢ if confined to one room w/ intermittent usage). If someone can't spare 50¢-$2 a day because they won't be able to eat [despite the citywide free "Home Delivered Meal Program" for seniors & the disabled], I kinda question how they managed to have a roof over their head at all. Sounds sus.