We are running out of superlatives to describe what climate change is doing to the weather. Temperature records have been broken, smashed and then obliterated. Droughts have been prolonged, extreme and then brutal. Storms have gone from damaging to unprecedented to apocalyptic. Eventually we are left with the language of destruction and death, as only this can adequately communicate the consequences of our actions.
Hundreds of lives have been lost under the deadly heat dome that has settled over the Pacific Northwest. This lethal heat is the result of a region of high pressure. That in turn is the result of sea temperatures in the Western Pacific being much higher than in the Eastern Pacific. This puts into motion a vast conveyor belt of hot air that snakes its way over the Pacific. When it meets North America, it becomes trapped by the high-altitude winds of the jet stream. The end result is weather beyond our endurance.
Last week the all-time temperature record for Canada stood at 45°C. On Tuesday thermometers in Lytton in British Columbia measured 49.6°C. The next day the population of 250 was evacuated as a wildfire suddenly swept into the village. Within hours it had destroyed homes, a health clinic and an ambulance station. Lytton itself was founded in the middle of the 19th Century during a gold rush in the region. Back then, global average temperatures were 1.2°C lower than today. It’s been humanity’s craving for fossil fuels, not precious metals, that ultimately led to its destruction.
Over the past few hundred years, industrialised nations have pumped over two trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere. This has increased the greenhouse effect and is the primary cause of climate breakdown. There are now regions in the tropics which experience deadly extreme temperatures and humidity. Being outside of an air-conditioned space means you risk dropping dead. The UK is far from immune to this unfolding catastrophe. The UK Climate Resilience Programme recently painted a bleak picture of a nation utterly unprepared and facing thousands of climate-related deaths annually from heatwaves and flooding.
A few years ago I would have laid awake at night worrying about what was coming. Now I often find myself angry instead. None of this is unexpected. None of this is new. We have always known that more global heating would produce more extreme events, more death and destruction. And it’s only going to get worse. The Western Antarctic Ice Shelf is disintegrating. Recently it was raining on Greenland’s glaciers. It’s becoming increasingly likely both regions are passing tipping points and will eventually melt, even if we were to immediately stop burning fossil fuels.
But there is no prospect of that happening. In order to have any sort of hope of limiting warming to no more than 1.5°C and further tipping points, we would need to rapidly reduce carbon emissions. In 2020 they did decrease as the Covid19 pandemic brought the global economy to a halt. This year they have rebounded while governments and banks pour billions into financing continued fossil fuel exploration. We feed the fire knowing full well it will eventually consume us.
The scorched village of Lytton is within an area that has been inhabited by the Nlaka’pamux people for over 10,000 years. These first nation people would never have experienced anything like the changes that we are ourselves are driving. We are witnessing the breakdown in the stable climate that has allowed all human civilisations to flourish and our current one to prosper.
For too long climate change has been discussed as a distant threat, something that we have time to address. Certainly not something to get in the way of seeking never ending economic growth. Well, now it’s here, and it’s going to destroy more communities and kill more people until we actually do what we have been saying we will do for the past 30 years – stop burning fossil fuels.
James Dyke is a senior lecturer in global systems at Exeter University. His book Fire, Storm and Flood: the Violence of Climate Change will be published this summer
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