Opinion: Another signal that now is the time to curb emissions

Nov. 18, 2011

Today's IPCC summary on extreme weather makes clear that no one will escape the changes being driven by our greenhouse gas emissions. Change is happening now. Will we act in time?

By Sabrina McCormick

for the DailyClimate.org

For the first time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has brought together research on climate change, adaptation and disasters. This innovation moves beyond scientific warnings raised in other IPCC reports to provide a broad  - and alarming - review of what needs to be done to prepare for climate-related impacts. 

I helped author the report because I am deeply concerned about what happens to the least advantaged when extreme events hit. As a researcher who has worked with communities impacted by weather disasters, I know how keenly climate-related catastrophes are felt at the most local level - in homes, schools, religious groups and other communities. If people understand the effects of their greenhouse gas emissions, hopefully they will strive to cut these emissions to avoid suffering the consequences of inaction.

The report released today - a summary the Special Assessment on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation - tells us that heat waves are very likely to increase, ands droughts, sea level rise and extreme precipitation events will likely escalate. The traditional idea that the poor are most vulnerable continues to ring true, but the shifting spatial and temporal scale of these extreme events means that no one will escape the ravages of climate change. No one. 

Less familiar planet

The massive economic ramifications of these events, as we have seen in the past year, are very likely to increase. Our world is transforming into a warmer, less familiar planet, a place where development is more expensive and disasters take greater tolls. Many of these impacts are connected to our own choices - how close we live to a floodplain, how much energy we use, whether we develop the desert and so forth. Some events driven by climate change may be small, yet result in massive damage.  

Our state of preparation will be key. That's the good news in this report. 

We have the power to take action and prevent or at least minimize the worst outcomes. Generally the costs of preparing are less than the costs of impacts. Scientists have been saying for years that curbing greenhouse gas emissions is critical to preventing climate change. The science has evolved: Now most research suggests that the climate has already begun to change.

We can still avoid the worst calamities by changing our behavior.  In the end, we can't determine exactly who will be hit by what, but we all need to take action. The most recent survey of the science says that must happen today, not tomorrow.

Sabrina McCormick is a lead author of Chapter 5 of the IPCC's Special Assessment on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. She is also an assistant research professor at George Washington University. 

Photo of a monk in a rainstorm in Westminster, Calif., courtesy Vu Bui/flickr.

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