Time for prevention, not just reaction
If the acceleration of extreme floods and storms worldwide were freak events, a purely reactive crisis-response would have been justified. But because this change is the predictable outcome of human activity, proactive prevention is now the only lasting response to the uptick in weather disasters.
Climate scientists are wary about linking a single event to climate change. There is unanimity, however, that rising carbon emissions are causing warmer temperatures and an atmosphere packing more energy and moisture — and the link between this and the sharp rise in the frequency and ferocity of weather disasters charted over the past decades is unmistakable. Warmer seas and more heat and water in the air are high octane to wind speeds and precipitation, as the storms and floods that have just hit Florida and Houston, the Caribbean, and South Asia demonstrated with terrifying effect.
The 50 inches of rainfall recorded by Houston weather stations during Hurricane Harvey or wind speeds of 150 miles during Hurricane Irma broke records. Some cautiously worded studies are beginning to attribute the higher chances of such extremes to climate change, and are citing 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and heat waves across the world in 2013. By some measures, the human contribution in such extreme hazards could be up to 30 percent of the rainfall.
To mitigate climate change, a shift to lowcarbon economies is a necessity: the only question is how and how quickly. Cutting back on carbon emissions calls for technological breakthroughs for cleaner and more efficient energy, but getting this adopted widely by households, agriculture and industry will require bold government policies and the backing of the private sector. The Paris climate agreement is an essential step for the world to value cleaner air. And the biggest emitters — China, the U.S., India, the European Union, Japan and Russia — must deliver far more than the Paris goals.
Hurricane Harvey also exposed Houston’s poor land-use planning and inadequate restrictions on land use. Hurricanes Irma, Harvey, Sandy and Katrina should be the point of departure to start a meaningful discussion in the U.S. on safe distances to live from coastlines, especially along the low-lying areas. Seven of the 10 U.S. states considered highly vulnerable to floods and storms, from Massachusetts to Florida, are heavily populated and lie along the low-lying, northeastern coast line. The current norms for safe distances are clearly no longer acceptable. It is important that the needed construction of levees do not give people a false sense of security to build in dangerous areas.
It makes all the difference if these disasters are viewed as one-off events or as predictable hazards whose underlying causes can — with sufficient investment, technological know-how and political will — be dealt with. Not everyone regards epidemics as acts of God anymore; it is high time that the same holds for weather disasters.
Vinod Thomas, of Bethesda, Md., is a former senior vice president of World Bank, Washington D.C., who has worked extensively in Latin America. He recently authored a book “Climate Change and Natural Disasters” 2017 (Routledge).