A Little Book About Climate Change by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

Migration

As the climate changes, we face further extreme weather events that will require us to adapt.

Weather patterns and ocean currents are changing. Sometimes extreme cold can push down to very low latitudes. Sometimes heatwaves can set in, even in very northerly regions. Hurricanes and tornadoes are getting more intense. Severe drought may be interspersed with torrential downpours. Perhaps the biggest concern from all of these is the disruption to agriculture.

In the previous chapter we saw how alternative forms of agriculture could assist us in our efforts to mitigate climate change. Would such measures cope better than industrial farming with the extreme weather events I’m describing here? I think the answer is yes, up to a point.

All types of farming are a battle with the weather, and there are limits to what could be done before food growing becomes so difficult and expensive it’s just not viable. Nations, even quite wealthy ones, may not be in a position to import their food supply from elsewhere. As such, the only viable option may be migration.

So, whilst sea-level rise, flooding and extreme 52

A Little Book about Climate Change weather events may be the direct cause of some migration (especially migration internally to nations) it is disruption to food supply that is likely to be the main driver.

I think large-scale migration is probably our biggest challenge in terms of adaptation. I’m sure the reader will appreciate the difficulties this presents to governments. It’s all very well building sea walls and flood defences — citizens are likely to see the need for such measures and to welcome them. But the prospect of receiving huge numbers of ‘climate refugees’ from other nations is an entirely different matter.

At the moment we cannot be certain exactly how weather patterns will turn out if the world warms by two, three or four degrees. But there will inevitably be winners and losers, especially with regard to the critical aspect of food supply.

Nature’s Adaptation

Nature too will be forced to adapt to a warming world. Some species will manage to adopt our human solution and to migrate. For others though, this may not be possible. Humanity faces a dilemma here. We have made quite a mess of things by introducing ‘invasive species’

in

the

past

—

sometimes

deliberately,

sometimes in error. Should we go on interfering in a similar manner by trying to move species to places where they will be safer from the effects of climate change? Alternatively, should we just leave it to nature to fend for herself? In which case, probably, many species will not make it, but others may thrive. Or, perhaps a mixture of these two approaches? We have many such 53

A Little Book about Climate Change dilemmas already, and no doubt many more will follow. I refer the reader back once more to those first weeks of lockdown that occurred in many countries at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. As many of us witnessed at that time, left to her own devises, nature can spring back with an abundance that can surprise and amaze us.