The Key to Avoiding Future Climate Disasters? Adapting

Wildfires, floods and other crises are influenced by climate change, but we can do much more to save lives and property by focusing on urgent practical changes on the ground

By Roger Pielke, Jr. Excerpts:

"there’s a problem with turning so reflexively to climate change as the prime explanation for the rising human costs of disasters: It has the unfortunate tendency to push other crucial considerations out of the conversation, especially the need to devote much more of our attention and resources to adapting ourselves and our societies to the challenge of a changing climate.

"Consider the widely cited data set of “Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters” produced by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Since 1980, NOAA has tallied the annual number of disasters that have resulted in a loss estimate of $1 billion or more, adjusted for inflation. In 1980, there were three such disasters, and in 2020 there were 22, an apparently massive increase. The data set is often used as an official government indicator of the increasingly severe impact of climate change.

But, as NOAA itself notes, the increasing cost of disasters can be attributed to many factors beyond climate. The most important of these is the dramatic increase in U.S. wealth and population since 1980.

Consider the case of Hurricane Kate, which made landfall near Mexico Beach, Fla., in 1985 and caused about $600 million in damages in current dollars—not enough to make NOAA’s list for that year. Estimates that I developed with colleagues, published in the journal Nature Sustainability in 2018, show that if we take into account the 50% increase in the region’s population over more than three decades, and the parallel rise in the value of homes, their contents and other built infrastructure, that exact same storm today would cause damages amounting to some $2 billion."

"the increasing cost of disasters has a lot to do with changed patterns of economic development."

"researchers studying the effect of extreme heat on Africa’s growing cities wrote that, in most cases, rising risks are “predominantly driven by changes in population alone or by concurrent changes in climate and population, with the influence of changes in climate alone being minimal.”"

"the largest uncertainty concerns how coastal societies will adapt to sea-level rise, which can influence future flood risk by factors [of] 20–27.”"

"the incidence of heat waves and wildfires over the past century has increased in some places around the world, but not all. The U.S. has seen an increase in heat waves since the 1960s, but not to a degree beyond the “dust bowl” decade of the 1930s. Wildfires and drought have increased in the American West and Southwest, respectively, but they have not risen globally over the long term, nor have floods or tornadoes."

"To better prepare for future disasters, reducing our vulnerability—that is, adapting—is far more important than establishing the precise role of climate in contributing to weather and climate extremes."

"the world has already made considerable progress in protecting people and property against geophysical and weather disasters. Global economic losses from such disasters, as tracked by the reinsurance company Munich Re, have trended down since 1990 as a proportion of world GDP"

"the five years ending in 2020 saw the fewest deaths worldwide from geophysical and weather disasters than at any point in at least the last century. In the past decade, those deaths amounted to less than 10% of such deaths in the 1920s, though the global population has nearly quadrupled."