How to Live in a Climate ‘Permanent Emergency’
By David Wallace-Wells
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/how-to-live-in-a-climate-permanent-emergency.htmlThis year suggests the possibility of a new arrival — the age of adaptation, or what climate-and-energy researcher Juan Moreno-Cruz yesterday called “climate realism.”
Alarmism, he said, was “useless,” and even efforts to decarbonize have served as a kind of distraction. “Stop dreaming up climate solutions, think of climate managing strategies,” he admonished.
Talking climate solutions has left us unprepared for actual climate change. We keep running models and fighting over which “solution” is the best, but we have done nothing to address the impacts of climate change.
Managing climate change is not as sexy as solving climate change, but it’s what we need. Yes, we need real action to achieve deep decarbonization in our economy. There is no amount of adaptation we can do if we don‘t get emissions under control. But we already baked in so much warming we need to deal with it now. We painted ourselves into this corner, and we need to navigate our way out of it. Dreaming about a future carbon-free system will do nothing for people in India and Pakistan today.
Perhaps the great awakening on warming has already happened — or keeps happening and keeps being forgotten, among other reasons so that we can continue to believe we stand just at the threshold of climate suffering rather than well beyond it. But the great awakening on adaptation probably still lies ahead of us. Or maybe that “permanent emergency” is beginning right now.