Climate Change May be an Opportunity (Brussels Morning)
Channel: Sam Vaknin's Musings
Date: 2023-06-23

Full text in Brussels Morning column: https://brusselsmorning.com/climate-change-may-be-an-opportunity/32976/

None of this unseemly haggling is going anywhere. Nor is any of it relevant: climate change is here to stay, an inexorable process, an inalienable feature of the future, a fact. Rather than squander billions on futile attempts to reverse or halt it, we need to begin to learn to co-exist with it in the long-term. 

We should take an inventory of what we know and act upon it resolutely (mitigation): emissions from fossil fuel combustion should be tamed, captured, stored, sunk, and sequestered (aerosols to be further studied in conjunction with global dimming and ozone depletion); measures for population control and family planning enhanced; alternative and renewable fuels should be studied and incentives provided to energy-efficient, clean and green technologies; cement manufacture should be tweaked; cap and trade (or tax) schemes implemented on the national, corporate, and individual levels; weather-resistant, energy-conserving, and green construction technologies pioneered; the diets of livestock should be adapted to restrict biological emissions; deforestation and reforestation should be rationalized as should be land use; drought-related indigenous agricultural and water management knowledge and crop varieties should be preserved; coastal flood defenses erected or strengthened; cities should be relocated inland; and weather-monitoring capacity should be extended and modernized. These measures make good sense, whatever the urgency of the problem facing us may be.

But we should invest the bulk of our scarce resources in research and innovation. We should accept that climate change is inevitable and work out ways of harnessing it to our benefit. 

We should come up with new agricultural methods and strains; new types of tourism; novel irrigation techniques; water desalination, diversion, transport, and allocation schemes; ways of sustaining biological diversity and of helping the human body adapt and cope to extreme weather; and global plans to cope with energy production problems, poverty, and disease triggered by global warming.

For the next few centuries, climate change is largely irreversible (as the IPCC essentially admits). To think otherwise is completely delusional. We would do better to re-imagine our existence on this planet (adaptation). 

As temperatures rise in certain locales (and drop in others!), new economic activities and routes of commerce would be made possible or rendered feasible; new types of produce and forests will flourish; new technologies will be developed to cater to a emerging and growing set of needs.
We would do well to not consider global warming a crisis, but reconceive of it as a massive change, or even an opportunity. 

The initial costs of every transformation and transition in human history have been steep (recall the Industrial Revolution and, more recently, the transition from Communism to Capitalism). Climate change is not likely to be the only exception. 
Such a massive realignment implies severe disruption and great distress. But invariably, tectonic shifts are followed by an extended period of creativity and growth. This time will be no different.