Who are we kidding! It’s time that we stop denying the current and future potential impacts of climate change, and get on with figuring out how best to adapt to it. Furthermore, we can argue until we’re blue in the face about the primary causes — man-made or natural. The fact of the matter is that climate change is here to stay and has major implications.
There are few areas where the climate doesn’t have a major impact. Various elements of our economies and daily lives depend heavily on stable climates, including agriculture, tourism, communications and transportation. We’ve seen what extreme weather events can do to our everyday lives. Numerous major coastal cities are most at risk of rising sea levels as a result of polar melt, especially of a large section of the West Antarctica ice sheet. Although there has not been a big increase in the number of hurricanes, warming ocean trends are intensifying the strength of the storms. Severe droughts from Australia to the American south are negatively affecting major agricultural crops, and influencing the growing number and severity of forest and brush fires. Warming trends in the northern hemisphere will lead to movement of certain insect populations further north, and potentially introduce more diseases such as the West Nile virus and lyme disease while affecting local ecologies.
Are we well prepared to deal with the impact of climate change? Clearly the answer is a resounding “no”. Our aging and neglected infrastructures are crumbling even faster under the weight of severe climate events. Resources needed in the event of weather-related emergencies are hardly adequate to minimize the negative impacts on communities and regions. New technologies will have to be introduced and resourced to help cope with such emergencies.
We will have to pay a lot more attention as to where we are planning and building communities, be they near oceans or wilderness habitats. We have recently seen the dire risks of flooding, fires, landslides, etc. on numerous North American communities. Despite the obvious facts, governments continue to ignore such major and unreasonable risks by allowing such development to occur.
All throughout history, man has had to adapt to his environment. At this point in history, there is the evident need for serious and timely action. The time for words and debates has long passed. Denying the inevitable is no longer a choice. Indeed, climate change is no longer a laughing matter.
FROLITICKS 