Adaptation and the escalating crisis

Rough gelli print by me, part of a small book responding to news of hurricanes

My news and social feeds this summer and early Autumn (2024) are flooded with…floods, hurricanes, landslides and wildfires. Here are just a few examples:

• Typhoon Yagi, known in the Philippines as Severe Tropical Storm Enteng, was a deadly and extremely destructive tropical cyclone which impacted Southeast Asia and South China in early September 2024.
• Floods and landslides caused by torrential downpours wreaked havoc across Nepal, killing at least 236 people and resulting in widespread destruction.
• Severe flooding hit Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, and in Uruguay, caused by heavy rains and storms in May 2024 causing 181 fatalities and 580,000 displaced in Rio Grande do Sul. Over half a million people were left with out power and water.
• Since 6 March 2024, unseasonably heavy rains and resultant flash flooding in Afghanistan and Pakistan killed over 1,000 people, and injured many more.
• Flooding in the Persian Gulf affecting oil-producing countries Oman and UAE.
• Hurricane Beryl was a severe and deadly hurricane that hit the Caribbean, Mexico and the Gulf Coast in June-July.
• The Wayanad landslides in Kerala, India. The disaster was one of the deadliest in Kerala’s history, with reports of over 420 fatalities, 397 injuries and 118 people missing.
• Hurricane Helene was a devastating tropical cyclone that caused widespread destruction and fatalities across the Southeastern United States in late September 2024. Feet of rain were dumped over the Appalachian mountains causing huge destruction. It also affected Mexico, Cuba, and the Honduras.
• There has also been extreme heat causing wildfires in Portugal, Croatia, Italy, Greece, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, California, Canada, Hawaii, and Chile.
• Most recently, Hurrican Milton that had a devastating impact on Florida, and would have caused more fatalities had there not been a mass evacuation.
• [Update as of 5th November, the extreme floods & storms have continued with more catastrophic events such as in Valencia].

The other items dripping into my feed are denialist conspiracy posts

They’re saying these extreme hurricanes, floods and other weather disasters are not ‘climate change’ but ‘geoengineering’, meaning that there has been deliberate conspiracy of unspecified agents to hack the weather by some kind of mysterious devices. Some Trump followers are issuing death threats to meteorologists accusing them of weather manipulation to reduce the population of places like Florida.

What’s confusing and ironic is that anthropogenic global heating is in itself a kind of geoengineering, and the process has been conspiratorial. Fossil fuel and extractive companies have known for 50 years that burning fossil fuels while destroying carbon sinks (like forests) would cause dangerous heating, yet they deliberately issued denialist propaganda and escalated the ecocide, pollution and carbon emissions — for profit.

One of 127 models that I’ve created for Earth Talk: my book and course

The energy released by this pollution over 150 years is equivalent to around 4.5 Hiroshima bombs every second. Some of the denialist memes are ridiculing the idea that humans have the power to change the climate (yet still manage to accuse unnamed elites of doing so) but the link between fossil fuel pollution and the energy released into the atmosphere and oceans is absolutely proven.

Meanwhile deforestation has escalated, and wildfires & drought due to global heating are also causing vast damage to nature. The Earth’s land and oceans cannot function as a finite dumping place for our emissions. Recent research on the arXiv server has painted a stark picture: natural carbon sinks — such as forests, soil, and oceans — barely absorbed any CO2 in 2023. The balance has tipped. Homeostasis is broken.

It’s hard to know why some are so keen to argue that this catastrophic climate disruption is caused by one kind of unknown technology and conspiracy rather than the extraction & ecocide technologies that make plain the harm they cause. This harm is proven by many thousands of studies since at least 1852.

The main source of these theories is from polluters who wish to confuse, distract and defuse blame. But what about the secondary spreaders of the theories? Maybe there are rewards to being contrary, causing excitement in suggesting alternative theories? Many are sure to be caring people and worried about the unprecedented devastation. This situation is hugely upsetting and so people will cast around for explanations if they are not in climate-informed networks.

If people and other species are to stay safe in this escalating crisis, we must have political acceptance of evidence rooted in the geophysical realities of the water and carbon cycles. It is science that I’ve had accurately explained to me by 7 year olds. There is no doubt about it: the hotter ocean temperatures which worsened these storms are hundreds of times likelier because of human-made global heating. We should be able to explain this, backed by so much science.

What is much more difficult is:

• how we ensure adequate reparations for those communities displaced and unconscionably traumatised (historically and anew),
• how we stop the proliferation of fossil fuels when the polluters can so easily buy disinformation, weapons, political power and licences to operate, and
• how we deal with the unfolding impacts.

This is what global political collaboration needs to focus on now. When I say ‘deal with’, I mean: anticipate risks, accept uncertainties, protect against and reduce exposure to and recover from its hazards, and ongoing ecological restoration, driven by principles of justice and continuing biodiverse life.

That means paying much more attention to risks and impacts in our climate discussions and planning.

Developed by me with Nick Brooks (Garama Adaptation Training) for a training offer on climate adaptation

This attention to impacts is typically given a coverall term ‘adaptation’.

However, the UNFCC describes adaptation in terms of coping with more moderate impacts and looking for business opportunities. This is far too modest and appeasing in its approach.

We need an expanded framing of adaptation to encompass the full spectrum from moderate to extreme impacts and from longer-term in the future to ‘already happened’.

There is increasing awareness of adaptation, alongside mitigation, but a good deal of civic planning for adaptation is too:

• tentative and incremental,
• technical, and overly optimistic,
• focused on shoring up physical infrastructure,
• ecologically insensitive,
• limited to primary impacts (extreme weather) rather than secondary impacts, which include:
• collapsing food & goods supply chains,
• collapsing safety nets & health services,
• strained insurance & financial systems,
• increased conflict over resources,
• the suffering of animals
• the collapse of biodiversity
• the destruction of built and natural heritage,
• the displacement of people,
• inflaming of racism and other prejudices as people seek refuge.

These are not held at the forefront of adaptation planning. I’ve been trying to include these in the Cultural sector climate response for some years but have struggled to communicate it. I realise now that we need to work harder on engaging people with vocabulary and concepts. Interestingly, the Climate Majority Project is embarking on such a project with its SAFER campaign (Strategic Adaptation for Emergency Resilience).

A key new term is Ruggedisation

See this explanation from its proponent, Alex Steffen.

• “Discontinuity is now the core fact of our lives. Our society is no longer suited to the [planetary conditions] we’ve made….
• We’re still rapidly changing our climate (and undermining ecosystems and long-running natural processes). We must cut emissions at breakneck speed, but even if we do, we’re already locked in unprecedented upheavals, and reversing climate change is not something we know how to do.
• The greater the gap between the climate our world was built to function in and the climate we have, the more brittle the places and systems around us become.
• The costs will be greater than we think. Orders of magnitude more than some people yet understand.
• Rebuilding to reduce brittleness while increasing sustainable prosperity is the main task of civilization now.
• There’s no new normal; the climate is moving from something we knew to a fluctuating set of conditions; we won’t be able to predict what the world we’re building for will look like.
• That means we have to rebuild in ways that limit anticipated risks and increase our capacities to respond dynamically to a variety of possible futures.
• Doing that is what I describe as ruggedization. We are not yet ruggedizing at scale or very quickly. Speed is everything, though, so slow progress means multiple points of failure are inevitable in all our lives.”

I’d love to know if you have other vocabulary and tools for engaging people with anticipating, protecting against, reducing exposure to and recovering from climate impacts.

The term I’ve been using most often recently is Collapse Response. I’ve created this mission framework, and would be really keen for your feedback.

Please comment on this post, or get in touch on bridget.mckenzie@flowassociates.com

If you like this post, you might be interested in my Earth Talk book and course.