Rethinking Climate Opening a Second Front in the Climate War (CALVIN)
I am not the ideal tour guide for our future climate surprises, but then no one is. For forty years, I have been participating in the climate scientists’ debates, asking questions as the new concepts unfolded. On occasion, I wrote up the news about abrupt climate shifts of the past, such as my 1998 cover story for The Atlantic, “The Great Climate Flip-flop.”
In fifty years of attempting emissions reduction, there has been no downturn in the annual CO2 trend. Worse, the trend became 50% steeper after 2000. Then the climate threats worsened in the 21st century. Yet none sufficed to alter the “carbon diet” treatment plan. Instead, we got the standard exhortation for diets: double down on your individual efforts. “Every little bit counts!” But this is not your grandfather’s climate problem anymore.
One might suppose that our better leaders (and high-visibility commentators) would be adopting a wartime sense of mission, that they would try to get the rest of us organized and focused on better solutions than emissions reduction.
But lowering the emissions rate is the only thing our leaders ever mention when talking about a treatment plan: “Double down on that carbon diet!” One would think that doing anything more was, well, optional.
The 21st century arrived with an additional fast-moving threat, far more important than another fractional degree of global average surface overheating.
We are now in a new danger zone, if only because additional extreme weather events have boosted the chances of a one-two punch, a second big hit before recovering from the first. For example, the number of severe inland windstorms (tornado clusters, hailstorms, derechos—but omitting hurricanes) shifted in 2008 to thereafter average six times more than the 1980-2007 baseline. In recent years, the annual numbers have been nine times the old baseline.
That means that the future chances of a big one-two punch have soared by about forty times. We should be planning for frequent one-two punches, yet we have not even bothered to underground power lines nor to gradually stockpile food.
Between 2002 and 2010, there were four more shifts in other aspects of extreme weather: up triple-or-more were the number of billion-dollar episodes of severe inland floods and prolonged fire weather. Though less frequent, there were repeated order-of-magnitude intensifications for both stalled hurricanes and mega heatwaves. We cannot go on with those 20th-century assumptions of gradual change that omit such fast-acting perils.
Regularly revisit the diagnosis and treatment plan. That is what we teach medical students to do: to always look for new players and for better treatment combinations, remember how quickly collapse can get started, and to ask if treatments need to be front-loaded using higher initial doses. That is what I mean here by medical mindset.
The 21st-century climate problem now requires a focus on preventing collapse. To save ourselves, we must now counter the emissions of less advanced countries as they play catchup. You’d never guess that, not from what our leaders choose to talk about.
We will need to try designing a half-dozen interventions, all at once. That is how a serious “Second Front” gets underway. We begin with various “Manhattan Projects” to design, prototype, and field test the potential interventions.
I have been painting a picture of where we are heading if we fail to successfully intervene. That should not be taken to imply that, within decades, debilitation and collapse are inevitable. All you have been hearing is the first two parts of the physician’s three-part presentation to the patient, diagnosis and prognosis. They are not the full conversation. The third part is treatment plan. Shade. Cleanup. Building resilience. All as Manhattan Projects. To summarize:
We need to retire the notion that going on a fossil fuel diet will fix our climate problem. A move in the right direction may be ineffective.
Many people think that “Zero Emissions” or “Net Zero” will make the accumulation go away. No.
After 1985, the land temperature rose three times faster than the ocean surface. Alter the temperature contrast over coastlines and that may change the onshore winds and where they deliver rain—producing droughts here and floods there. There indeed has been more global drought: the land area in drought doubled between 1983 and 2003.
Global drought and the 21st century surges in extreme weather pose a much more immediate threat than another fractional degree rise in average surface temperature. Climate action now needs to be big, quick, and sure to work the first time. Collapse will kill faster than heat. Climate action now needs to focus on the short term via creating shade and removing excess CO2.
The climate crisis has been a lot to wrap our hearts, heads, and strategic policy around. But we now need big interventions before we miss even more exits on the Freeway to Hell.