Climate Change: How You Will be Impacted
Even though climate change is already happening, people are unaware of how disruptive it will be to their lives
Rising sea levels, hotter weather, more storms, extinct species, and a shorter skiing season. Unfortunately, it is really hard to imagine just how bad of a problem climate change will be, or how disruptive it is going to be to your life. In this article I am going to paint a picture of the effects of our warming climate and its impact on society and your life personally.
Try to think of your mindset just before COVID-19 hit badly. Say around February/March 2020. You already understood it is going to be a big deal, you might have known someone who had to cancel travel plans or go into quarantine, but you still had a natural optimism. You couldn’t imagine it would disrupt the world quite as much as it did. This is a great way to think about the disruption expected by climate change. While you know it is a really big problem, you can’t quite wrap your head around how completely it is going to change your life. But, just like COVID-19, it most definitely will. Unfortunately while COVID-19 hit us over a few weeks, climate change is creeping up on us over some years, making it easier for us to ignore, but we ignore it at our peril.
We have already started experiencing increased heat waves and extreme storms. Over the last 115 years there has been an average rise of around 1°C (1.8 °F) with record breaking weather extremes becoming a yearly ordeal. Personally I received a very small preview of global warming when I moved from warm Israel to cold Germany at the beginning of 2020. While I came prepared for a harsh winter, I wasn’t expecting weeklong heat waves in the summer with temperatures exceeding 35°C (95°F), no one was.
But these phenomena are really just a small indication of a much larger problem looming. Last time the world’s CO2 levels were as high as they are today was millions of years ago. During this peak of atmospheric CO2, average temperatures were 2°-3°C higher than they are today. But this seemingly small average temperature change was enough to make the world a very different place — e.g. the melted ice caused sea levels to be 25–35 meters higher than they are today.
Currently, 10% of the world’s population lives within 10 meter altitude of sea level. So a 20+ meter sea rise will be devastating to a huge portion of the world. By using the period with similar amounts of atmospheric CO2 as a reference, you begin to understand the magnitude of the problem we are facing. In earlier periods of the planet there were similar circumstances to the ones we are facing that caused mass extinction events and much higher sea levels.
While analogies to other geological times are a great way to get a feeling for what lies ahead of us, bare in mind that the world was very different back then and we can’t expect the exact same scenarios. We can, however, get an impression of the amount of change we are expecting. And while the mentioned changes were relatively quick (in geological times) they took thousands and millions of years. Due to massive human activity, burning fossil fuels millions of times faster than they were created, we are now experiencing similar changes in mere tens of years.
And while change isn’t inherently bad, these changes will be violent and relentless. Don’t expect a smooth transition that we get through by installing air conditioners and building big dams. It will be a new type of climate, accompanied by weather extremes like humanity has never experienced. It is predicted that “Madrid’s climate in 2050 will resemble Marrakech’s climate today, Stockholm will resemble Budapest, London to Barcelona, Moscow to Sofia, Seattle to San Francisco, Tokyo to Changsha”. But in the same study that made these disturbing predictions, they didn’t manage to find analogies for 22% of the cities in research. We aren’t talking about a gradual change but rather increasingly disastrous weather, like the typhoon that hit Vietnam late Oct 2020 where nearly 1.3 million people needed to be evacuated. Already now there is a climate caused disaster happening every week, the situation will only worsen with time.
With extreme weather events (that we have already started experiencing) and the quick transition to climate like we never experienced before, we are heading into a period of unprecedented disruption. Even now “a half-billion people already live in places turning into desert”. But the unexpected weather ahead will lead to changes so big that the world’s food supply change will break down.
In the past decades, there has been war and civil unrest that forced people to flee their homes as refugees often causing political instability in countries that receive these refugees. These events are really just a taste of what will be caused by global warming. With the expected food chain disruptions, storms and floods, we are going to see mass migrations up to 15 times greater that the current global refugee crisis. As a result, climate change caused events together with food and water scarcity are also expected to increase conflicts and wars.
Think about earth like an angry Bruce Banner, just about to transform into the Hulk. The transformation is almost inevitable without some extreme intervention. In this analogy, humanity has the unfortunate role of the shirt Bruce is wearing; we are on the planet, but while it is transforming, it will carry on spinning regardless of if we stay on it or not. It is highly unlikely that this shirt is going to adapt fast enough to the new situation and so it is likely going to suffer some serious damage by the time the transformation is finished.
The unfortunate truth is that regardless of whether we get a handle on climate change, what you know as “normal” is going to change. If we manage to pull together and put all of our efforts into reversing global warming, the damage will likely be controllable, but we will have to put an enormous amount of resources into the transformation, well beyond what any government is currently proposing. We will have to stop using most of the world’s power plants, factories, vehicles, infrastructure etc., at least until we can upgrade or replace their energy source with green fuels or alternatives. On the other hand, if we don’t get our act together, climate change will cause mass turmoil. Not only will global warming degrade your quality of living, but it is literally putting civilisation as we know it under threat. So regardless what we do, at this point, change is inevitable.
Amazingly, humanity has the tools to replace all major infrastructure with green alternatives, but it is going to be a hell of an uphill climb (I dive into the size of the challenge in my previous article). In practice, we are likely going to have some of both scenarios with both significant environmental damage and big investment in switching to a green economy. But the important thing to remember is that the sooner we start fighting this crisis, the more stability we can expect in the long run. At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, New Zealand responded with quick and tough action. While they paid a high price for it at the time, they later reaped the fruits many fold with relative stability in a tumultuous world. But if the COVID-19 pandemic was a punch in society’s gut, the climate crisis has the potential to be a knockout.
Take automobiles as an example for a big change that needs to happen. Cars and trucks are responsible for around 12% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that electric cars are already being mass produced, and we can create clean energy to power these cars using solar, wind and other green energy sources. But even if we stopped selling non-electric cars tomorrow, the average life expectancy of a new vehicle is around 8 years and some well-built vehicles can be used for 15 years. So it will still take quite a long time to replace all the billion and a half cars on the road. And even after that, the bigger challenge is ensuring that all the incremental electricity is generated sustainably.
In other sectors where there aren’t already commercially available green alternatives, like aviation which alone accounts for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, the challenge is even bigger. But because companies aren’t paying for the damage they are causing, their incentive to develop green technologies is small and accumulating atmospheric CO2 is making the problem bigger. If companies were forced to pay the full price for the damages they are causing, we could expect a push in development similar to the one we saw when developing the COVID-19 vaccine.
While the road to a green economy is challenging, the other road, where we allow global warming to take its course, is much scarier. And from the two roads diverged ahead of us, only in one of them can we expect that the woods and nature will stay intact. Which one would you prefer to leave untaken?
People have been worrying about sustainability for a long time. Here is a really old parable from Jewish scripture that represents our responsibility to fix the damage we made. Although with the threat so imminent, it is all the more relevant now.
“At the time that the Holy One created the first man, He introduced him to every tree in the Garden of Eden, and said to him, ‘See how wonderful and pleasant these trees are. And all of this I have created for you; therefore take great care that you do not damage and destroy My world, for if you do there is no one else to put right what you have destroyed.” (Kohelet Rabbah 7:13:1)
If you want to start supporting the fight against climate change, one of the best ways an individual or business can start, is by finding and donating to the most efficient environmental NGOs. To make life easier, there are funds that find the most efficient way to make a difference for you. The one I donate to, with my own money and with my business’, is the Founders Pledge Climate Fund. In my previous article I talked about how the right donation now has a compound impact on fighting climate change in the long term.
For donations less that $10,000, if you are based in Europe then you can contribute via EA funds here or if you are based in the US, then please contribute here. For donations over $10,000, please send an email to funds@founderspledge.com, or contact me/comment below and I can message the team there.