It has been part of established wisdom for decades now that the impacts of climate change would be felt much more strongly by countries in the Global South, the part of the world least responsible for causing climate change in the first place. This sense of deep injustice permeated speeches by developing country leaders, international organization representatives, and even civil society and other voices from the North that were sympathetic with the plight of the South. Incidents of intensified hurricanes and typhoons, prolonged droughts and cataclysmic floods, seemed to prove this on a regular basis. Even if occasionally developed countries were also hit by such extreme occurrences, their superior infrastructures – physical, financial / insurance and in terms of governance – could deal with the negative effects in a timely and decisive manner, minimizing the impact on people and the long-term cost.
The successive heatwaves scorching Western Europe and North America in recent weeks show another face of the climate impacts and may well require a reconsideration of the distribution of damage and costs – or, in the UNFCCC jargon, “the loss and damage” factor. Without forgetting the destructive climate impacts that continue in the Global South, in these recent cases it is cause and effect that are coming together, in the same geographical location, for a change. The sweltering heat that torments the Global North is taking extreme forms, with melting asphalt on the roads of Europe, railway lines becoming treacherous because the heat exceeds their specifications, people drowning in France as they desperately jump into all kinds of polluted and unattended waters – even when hardly knowing how to swim, with schools closing because there is no air-conditioning. When energy is most needed for cooling purposes, conventional and nuclear power plants have been forced to suspend operations, because the water they use from nearby rivers and lakes is not cool enough for their electricity generation processes to work. Even a major July 4th event marking US Independence Day and the 250th anniversary of the US had to be delayed by several hours, President Trump’s speech included, because of extreme heat and stormy conditions in Washington, DC.
These could be exceptional circumstances caused by the periodic El Niño phenomenon that this year seems to be particularly strong. But what if these early summer heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere are here to stay, together with the damage that they cause to public and private infrastructure, the serious inconveniencing of people and even the human casualties, including significant numbers of excess deaths? Is it possible that the means available to the developed Global North and the most powerful West, including their specialized human, material, financial/security and governance/managerial resources, are reaching the limits of their effectiveness? Might the public react and demand real action by the political classes and the economic actors to fight climate change, even to revive and deepen such ambitious but currently sidelined policies, like the European Green Deal (EGD) for the EU and the climate-related provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for the US?
It may be too much to expect from mostly short-sighted and self-serving politicians catering to the knee-jerk reactions of misinformed and anxious publics to see the light and chart new courses that are adequate for addressing the challenges at hand. The gradual acceptance of the causality between human-made or at least human-exacerbated climate change and the serious impacts being felt ever more widely, is not necessarily leading to pressure for the implementation of the UN’s Paris Agreement or of other global, regional or national commitments for climate mitigation and adaptation. The rising number and severity of disasters, though, and the ever-larger resources required to respond to them, may build up frustrations that cannot be discounted. At that point, the repercussions may be far-reaching for politics, the economy and society, in addition to the natural environment.
For one, the choice may soon become inevitable between spending to address climate change impacts and increasing defense budgets. Should skyrocketing public debt be used for both, or which one should get precedence? What is more important, installing cooling systems in schools and hospitals or buying new combat planes, frigates, drones and other military equipment? Maybe it is time for human security to take centerstage in the broad security discourse that is dominated by considerations of ongoing and potential future wars. Innovation in technology, architecture, finance and governance could thus be rekindled, in search of drastic alternative solutions required to deal with living and working under conditions of extreme heat and other intense climate impacts. The huge amounts of energy and other environmental resources like water required for cooling AI-enabling data centers could be put to better use by helping to generate such much-needed human security innovation at speed.
Doing nothing is not an option for political leaders and citizens alike under the extreme circumstances caused by advancing climate change, as now being painfully experienced even by the most developed parts of the world. Despite all the hardship that this is causing, an important silver lining may be the eventual reassessment of what is important in public and personal life, the reprioritization of the use of key resources, and the establishment of a true spirit of mutual understanding, solidarity and decisive action by all parts of humanity. Of course, to get to that stage, a lot more pressure needs to be exerted by responsible citizens, civil society organizations, religious groups and intergovernmental bodies, and in the process a lot more “loss and damage” will be suffered by us all.
