We have introduced so much carbon dioxide into nature’s operating system that we no longer know “what is an act of God and what is an act of man” when it comes to natural disasters striking with increasing frequency and overwhelming power, says Nathan Lewis, a chemistry and energy specialist at the California Institute of Technology.
Lewis made this statement during a discussion with friends about what was still a recent topic at the time: the fury with which Hurricane Katrina had struck New Orleans. Journalist Thomas Friedman notes that this statement can be placed in the broader context of a philosophical dilemma: are what we call natural disasters beginning to be, or already are, disasters caused at least in part by human activities?
Friedman also quotes climate expert Heidi Cullen, who admits that although she used to welcome a warm day in winter as a gift, she now sees it as a punishment. This is not because she dislikes nice weather, but because she believes it comes at an exorbitant price: “You can’t tinker with nature’s operating system without eventually paying for it, sometime, somewhere.”
Despite increasingly worrying environmental reports on the impact of rising CO₂ levels in the atmosphere, we still know very little about how the various negative effects of global warming might interact and amplify each other.
A study shows how close we may be to the point of no return, where the planet’s ecological limits are exceeded. The study estimates that approximately 45% of potential environmental collapses are interconnected, meaning we could see a domino effect in the near future.
Many of the warnings from scientists have been ignored, or the measures taken in response have been disproportionately small compared to the scale of the problem. However, it is certain that we will no longer be able to afford to do so as the dramatic effects of climate change move from the pages of studies into everyday life.
The cost of disasters in 2018 ran into billions of dollars
According to German reinsurance group Munich Re, natural disasters caused $160 billion in financial damage globally in 2018, with insurance and reinsurance companies paying out $80 billion in claims, which is double the average of $41 billion over the past 30 years.
Overall, the level of damage caused by disasters in 2018 was above the average of $140 billion, making it the fourth most expensive year for insurance companies since 1980. However, compared to 2017, it was relatively inexpensive—Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria caused $350 billion in losses that year.
Nevertheless, 2018 saw its fair share of disasters, particularly in the second half of the year.
Forest fires reached unprecedented levels, costing tens of billions of dollars, says Ernst Rauch, the company’s climatologist. “Higher and higher temperatures are leading to ever greater droughts, and high humidity in the winter means that shrubbery grows quickly, creating an easily flammable material in dry summers,” he pointed out. The fires that ravaged Northern California in 2018 were the year’s most costly disaster (24 billion), according to Munich Re.
The insurance group recorded 850 natural disasters in 2018, 42% of which were storms, 46% were floods and landslides, 5% were earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, and 7% were fires and extreme temperatures. The continents most affected were Asia (43%), North America (20%), Europe (14%), and Africa (13%).
The particularly hot summer in Europe caused a drought that significantly affected the agricultural sector and was the most costly natural disaster on the continent, costing $3.9 billion. Europe faced the most costly year in terms of damage caused by extreme weather events in 2018 compared to the 2013–2018 period, according to Michal Lorinc, an analyst at the British risk consulting firm AON Impact Forecasting.
The most significant economic damage globally was caused by hurricanes Florence and Michael, which hit the United States, the Caribbean, and parts of Central America, leaving behind at least $32 billion worth of damage, according to a report by the charity Christian Aid.
Other notable disasters were the typhoons in the Asia-Pacific region (the most significant of which was Super Typhoon Yutu), violent storms in Japan (including typhoons Trami and Kong-Rey), Cyclone Titli in India (which caused over $920 million of damage and at least 85 deaths), and the earthquake in Haiti (which killed 18 people, injured 540 more, and destroyed 20,000 homes).
Although there are fewer figures for human losses than for material damage, the human toll weighs heaviest in the balance: natural disasters claimed 10,400 lives in 2018, 35% of which were flood victims (a substantial increase from the annual average of 14%), while 24% were killed by storms and hurricanes.
Even at the eleventh hour, there is still reluctance and denial that such disasters are caused by human intervention, but much quieter monsters are lurking nearby, waiting to strike. Those who have not experienced a hurricane or deadly flood first-hand cannot begin to imagine what they look like.
When death hangs in the air
“Polluted air” has not yet appeared on any patient’s death certificate. Or at least not yet. But that does not mean that the air we breathe cannot seriously affect our health.
In England, the family of a 9-year-old girl who died after a long battle with asthma were granted permission to request a new investigation into the cause of her death following a petition that gathered 100,000 signatures.
Ella Kissi-Debrah did not have bronchial asthma from birth, but started coughing in 2010, after which her health began to deteriorate, resulting in 27 hospitalisations in the last three years of her life.
In his report, Professor Stephen Holgate, an asthma and air pollution expert at Southampton University Hospital, noted a “striking association” between Ella’s hospitalisations and high air pollution levels recorded near her home. He concluded that there was a “real prospect that without unlawful levels of air pollution, Ella would not have died.”
According to the lawyer representing the girl’s family, the stakes in this case are high because clearly establishing a causal link between air pollution and death would put pressure on the authorities to find viable solutions.
The 2018 report by the European Environment Agency states that air pollution is an invisible killer and that we must redouble our efforts to tackle its causes. The report shows that air pollution is the cause of nearly half a million premature deaths in the European Union.
In May 2018, the EU Court of Justice brought proceedings against six countries for failing to meet air quality requirements: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Hungary, and Romania.
According to the World Health Organization, 91% of the global population lived in areas that did not meet air quality standards in 2016, resulting in over 4 million deaths. Around 91% of these deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries, primarily in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.
If pollution makes the environment hostile to human life and health, it can also have a detrimental effect on plant and animal species, forcing them to adapt or face extinction. Experts paint a bleak picture of the challenges we will face in 2019 in terms of biodiversity conservation.
Why we should remember that extinction is a one-way street
“The biodiversity of the planet is a unique and uniquely valuable library that we have been steadily burning down—one wing at a time—before we have even cataloged all the books, let alone read them all,” says John Holdren, the Harvard and Woods Hole environmental scientist.
The recklessness with which species-rich ecosystems, such as tropical forests, are being destroyed for financial gain has been compared by entomologist Edward Wilson to the idea of burning the paintings in the Louvre to cook dinner.
If the idea of a world made of steel, cement, and glass no longer frightens us, we should remember that ecosystems not only delight us with their unique array of colours and shapes, but also protect our lives. They provide us with drinking water, control soil erosion, protect us from natural disasters, provide shelter for insects that deal with pollution and eradicate parasites, and absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
In fact, as Wilson points out, those who tend to classify unknown or “insignificant” creatures as either “bugs” or “weeds” are mistaken, as these creatures have proven to be lifesavers on countless occasions. For example, the caterpillars of a tropical moth saved Australia’s forests from an invasion of cacti, the periwinkle plant, which is native to Madagascar, contains alkaloids that cure most cases of Hodgkin’s disease and acute leukaemia in children, and a substance in leech saliva has produced a dissolving agent that prevents blood clotting during surgery.
Experts warn that many species are endangered due to human activities.”Water temperatures are rising, increased flooding, deforestation, fires, storms — these are all things that affect a species’ existence,” emphasises Charise Johnson of the University of Washington.
For example, a study by the University of Rhode Island suggests that reducing oxygen levels in the oceans could affect zooplankton, which are a very important element of the ocean food chain. Deoxygenation of the oceans also leads to the proliferation of toxic algae, endangering marine life and affecting human health.
The release of carbon from melting polar ice is another threat identified in the 2019 Horizon Scan of Emerging Issues for Global Conservation report. This process will also release mercury, affecting animals, plants, and soil.
According to a report by the World Wildlife Fund, we have already lost 60% of the planet’s wildlife in just 40 years, with Carter Roberts, executive director of WWF in the United States, describing the figures as “a grim reminder and perhaps the ultimate indicator of the pressure we exert on the planet.”
It could get even worse: a study by the University of East Anglia estimates that half of the animal and plant species in some of the planet’s richest areas, such as the Amazon and the Galapagos Islands, could become extinct by the end of the century due to climate change.
As such, if temperatures rise and rainfall becomes increasingly scarce, African elephants will not have access to enough water (they usually consume 150–300 litres per day). Ninety-six percent of the Sundarbans tigers’ habitat could be flooded due to rising sea levels, and a significant proportion of male sea turtles would disappear as a result of rising average temperatures.
The report says that the most vulnerable species will be plants that find it difficult to adapt, such as orchids, as well as amphibians and reptiles, which will not be able to change their habitat quickly enough to survive.
According to some researchers, policies such as those of the Trump administration or the former president of Brazil could pose a real threat to biodiversity.
“The new president in Brazil could unravel 50 years of progress for species, tropical forests, and indigenous people,” said Lindsay Renick Mayer, associate director of communications for Global Wildlife Conservation. Former President Jair Bolsonaro, who likened indigenous communities living in protected areas to animals in zoos, transferred the management of indigenous reserves from the National Indian Foundation to the Ministry of Agriculture. This prompted concerns that it marked the beginning of the exploitation of the Amazon and its indigenous population.
Mayer said that the elections in Madagascar were also bad news for wildlife. The re-election of a president who allowed illegal logging to flourish during his term in office bodes ill for the country’s amazing biodiversity.
Conversely, Charise Johnson believed that funding for species conservation projects would remain an issue in 2019 under the Trump administration because environmental issues were not a priority for the administration.
According to Conservation International, a non-governmental organisation specialising in biodiversity conservation, a species disappears every 20 minutes—1,000 times faster than the norm throughout most of human history.
Although the slogan used by species conservation activists in the 1960s and 1970s—”extinction is forever!”—had a real impact on the community, people are much less shocked by a species’ disappearance today, even though the speed at which this is happening is truly frightening.
Thomas Brooks, senior director at the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, suggests we imagine how the planet—and ultimately our lives—would change if another natural factor were a thousand times higher than average.
“What if rainfall were a thousand times more than normal? We would be flooded. What if snowfall were a thousand times more than normal? We would never dig out. What if rates of disease transmission for malaria or HIV/AIDS were a thousand times higher than they are now? Millions would perish. But that is what is happening to plant and animal biodiversity today.”
With more and more species threatened with extinction, we could be the first generation to follow Noah’s example and save the last remaining specimens of many species, notes journalist Thomas Friedman.
However, to do this, we would need to realise that we are too busy creating the flood when we should be building more arks, Friedman points out.
The pinnacle of wisdom would be to realise in time that each of these plants, insects, birds, and animals is like an ark—the way they ensure the planet runs smoothly is so precise that they could live much more peacefully without us. The reverse, however, is not true.