Climate Change is Already Here

I don’t see how one can ignore what is going on with the weather. We had last year’s hurricane Harvey with the 1000-year flooding event, hurricane Irma and hurricane Maria that devastated Puerto Rico, which just recently got back its electricity for most of the island. This year we had hurricane Florence washing out the two Carolina’s, much like hurricane Harvey flooded Houston and its environ (stretching all the way to Beaumont) and this week we saw hurricane Michael, a Cat 4 hurricane blasting through the Panhandle Florida with 155 mph winds (Cat 5 is at 157 mph winds, so just shy of 2 “points”).

And then there’s the fires.

And the droughts.

And the heat waves around the world.

And the constant flooding in the northeast.

And so on and so on.

And then this week a report came out that we could be facing dire situation by 2040. That’s 22 years from now, within most population’s lifespan. According to this report, the mitigation will have to be economically wrenching in order to head off this impending peril. Of course, if these fires, droughts and famines, flooding and hurricanes continue to increase in devastating intensity, maybe the human population will be reduced. If the report is true, and I don’t see why not because we are already starting to see the effects of climate change, we will be facing severe social strife before 2040. The question is when.

So, we either take steps now which will be economically painful or we face grave dangers. The rich like the Koch brothers and the coal barons deny climate change. Probably because it will impact their financials. But I think they will still be wealthy, even if we start the mitigation process, whatever it may entail. The ones who will be hurt are the “not wealthy” because the mitigation will impact them more. And this is what will be the hardest to confront – the “not wealthy” undergoing severe economic constraints.

We just don’t know how mitigation will impact the social fabric of our societies. However we approach climate change, the "not wealthy" will bear most of the burden.

In the meantime, we will continue to see more severe weather events. I suspect climate change is here to stay.