Creating our own climate futurescape
What's a useful scenario?
As my research assistant, Buddy was good at looking out long-term. Here he seems to be considering sea level rise.
Many of us do not yet have a useful visualization of our future as the climate changes.
Climate, a relatively new concern, is just beginning to push itself into our expectations about family, neighborhood, and world futures. Most of us already have scenarios about our life’s financial path, our retirement options, our long-term fitness and health expectations, our career or calling. But when it comes to how climate change could affect us over the years ahead, many people I talk to have developed only a vague view.
That vagueness is prevalent in the media, and it’s not easy to get past it to create specific useful visions for ourselves. News, after all, implies discontinuity, and there’s always something that distracts or scares or encourages us, questioning whatever scenario we’re using to gauge safety or danger, to define what we want to happen, and to guide our actions.
Another difficulty: there’s no standard view for us to grab onto. Our climate vulnerabilities—and, yes, our opportunities—vary widely by where we live, what we do for a living, what our income and savings look like, and other personal factors. The climate future is a lot darker for some of us than for others.
What’s a good futurescape for?
When I ask people ‘What do you see happening over the coming years?’ the answers I get range from
“No idea” up to
Well informed but not personally relevant generalities, the sort of stuff the big research groups are projecting, on up to
concrete scenarios built around personal interests, with action steps included.
They have well-researched answers to questions like these.
At the personal level, will we see climate change endanger our family’s health? Trash our home, or maybe just its market value? Increase our insurance premiums, maintenance, and other home expenses?
At the community level, will building the necessary protections raise our local taxes and fees? Will our friends start moving away? Will we see the town or the neighborhood we love begin to deteriorate in front of our eyes?
More broadly, will our town's school system be weakened because funds are directed towards protecting the town and state from climate dangers. Will businesses depart certain areas due to those growing dangers?
Will the new world in a changed climate devalue the education, training and career experience we already have?
And for those who are looking beyond ourselves, the scenario we build can help us see where we might help others in need.
Humans in physical and health and financial peril.
Endangered species—animal and vegetable.
Recreation areas and historic sites imperiled.
What makes our personal scenario fit us?
To be helpful for tracking and decision-making, the climate scenario that serves us best, like those health, financial, and career futurescapes, reflects our circumstances and our way of seeing the world.
Are we pessimistic or optimistic? If we’re generally a pessimist about human nature, the common climate scenario—the one that shows governments, businesses and consumers soon changing their thinking and making dramatic cuts in emissions—may be useless. Hey, we’ve thought a lot about it, and we don’t believe it.
Do we need to see things through our own ideological or political lens? If we believe that not much is going to improve without dramatic government action, our futurescape needs to honor this, giving us the vision to get off our backsides and push our elected officials.
If we think only individual responsibility will save us, we need to acknowledge that particular pessimism, start prepping our family defenses, and recruit our neighbors to circle the wagons against catastrophe.
Does our scenario measure the world the way we do, mentally and emotionally? Some of us need to see hard economic and financial measures; some can more easily visualize human misery or triumph and see steps we might take to help.
Is our futurescape based on the impacts on us personally, very specific things like deteriorating asthma conditions, destruction (or improvement) of our property value, changes in education, career, or investment opportunities, and lots of others.
How far out do future events mean anything to us? Much of what we read about climate refers to 2050 or even 2100. Do predictions like that work for us? Sure, people we care about today will be alive in 2070, but many of us are unable to see and feel things so remote. For most of us, a scenario looking out a decade or less is likely to serve our needs best.
Are we action-oriented? Do we find it more riveting to visualize not just the problems but the decisions and actions that humans can take, say in transportation, energy, electrification, agriculture? Equally important, do climate effects, like temperature, health, or species diversity seem to depend less on any action we can take and more on the world’s temperature.
There are plenty of scenarios we can use as a starting place for creating our own.
THE IPCC If we’re looking for authoritative, comprehensive, long-term, and global projections, the best are probably found in last month’s update from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC). It tells us:
Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all. . . The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years. . .
Feasible, effective, and low-cost options for mitigation and adaptation are already available. . .
Rapid and far-reaching transitions across all sectors and systems are necessary to achieve deep and sustained emissions reductions and secure a livable and sustainable future. These involve a significant upscaling of a wide portfolio of mitigation and adaptation options. . .
All pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C, and 2°C involve rapid and deep and, in most cases, immediate greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors this decade. Global net zero CO2 emissions are reached for these pathway categories, in the early 2050s and around the early 2070s, respectively. [IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, March 2023]
But, whoa, for many of us, the IPCC’s view is far too general to help us imagine our own risks, too broad to help us picture things locally, devoid of steps we can take personally, and maybe just too pessimistic for our psyche. Something narrower, maybe more upbeat, might serve our purposes better. Here are some forecasts from specific points of view that might grab us and prove helpful.
Nature protection Some of us are inspired more by nature than commerce.
Cutting-edge modeling shows that without further efforts to counteract habitat loss and degradation, global biodiversity will continue to decline. However, it also shows that we can 'bend the curve' of this unwelcome trend, and begin to stabilize and reverse the loss of nature so that there is more nature in the world than there is now. It requires more conservation efforts, more sustainable production, and more sustainable consumption. [World Wildlife Foundation]
Energy innovation For those of us whose imaginations respond to the energy component of global warming, there are encouraging and action-filled forecasts.
The most recent Energy Policy Simulator update unlocks more decarbonization options than ever before, including scenarios with net-zero emissions. [Energy Innovation]
Economic impacts If we think more in terms of dollars and cents . . .
Our findings show that, if we continue on our current path, many regions of the U.S. face the prospect of serious economic effects from climate change. However, if we act aggressively to both adapt to the changing climate and to mitigate future impacts by reducing carbon emissions—we can significantly reduce our exposure to the worst economic risks from climate change. [Risky Business]
One important question: does the accuracy of a forecast matter? My take is that none of them is likely to prove truly accurate; but there are very few forecasts out there that will mislead us into making dangerous decisions. The purpose of a climate scenario, even if a little skewed, is to engage our imagination and help us focus on decisions and actions, not to present some super-authoritative projection that keeps sliding out of our consciousness.
Much is still not well understood, so of course we’re all going to have to revise our futures regularly as new information and new thoughts are developed.
Next week, I’ll write about what sort of futurescape helps me personally feel in control and eager to plunge into action. Readers can probably guess it’s near-term, locally focused, action-oriented, with confidence in government. But they may be surprised to hear it’s pessimistic, based on a single critical aspect of our changing climate that most of us ignore.