Everybody's shufflin' ... North
This past weekend marks celebrations of both Canadian Confederation and American Independence, and while we share good times with family and friends we’re also reflective of the climate forces that don’t give a hoot about flags or national borders. Right now, 80M people in the Midwest are under severe storm threat with many already displaced from flooding, 36M people in Texas are under an extreme heat warning that is putting major strain on electrical grids, and the record-shattering Canadian wildfire season has burned 20M acres and affected hundreds of millions.
Fires and floods displace people and destroy homes. Although these events can be completely devastating, mostly those communities return and rebuild. So what about when the disaster isn’t just a one-time event but a permanent change? Around the world and throughout history, resource scarcity has led to geopolitical upheaval and mass migration–for example, the climate-accelerated stress on freshwater resources that contributed significantly to the sociopolitical conflict in Syria, that has displaced almost 7M people so far. Imagine that, but on a global scale throughout the equatorial region (which happens to be most populous).
The ‘climate niche’ is the set of temperature and precipitation conditions where humanity flourishes. This map shows the temperatures we’re headed towards on our current 2.7 degree warming trajectory, with the shaded area representing temperature rise well above the climate niche. The business-as-usual scenario is 3.5 BILLION people from over 19% of the earth’s surface being displaced by 2070.
But remember, this isn’t an inevitability … yet. Seizing the opportunity to scale climate technology NOW will have the dual benefit of making communities more resilient to extreme weather events, while also keeping the extremes limited to events rather than permanent displacements. The weather news, warnings and broken records are alarming—think of these events as the warning rumbles of what could come in a not so distant future.