The History and Future of Places – Part 15: Changing climate, changing places

Climate change permeates the future of places everywhere. It is sort of slow-moving version of the Covid-19 pandemic, which itself has provided a test run through the challenges presented by climate change. Both are global in range, ignore national boundaries, and put the poor and vulnerable at greater risk than wealthy elites. Each involves exponentially increasing consequences, easily dismissed before they become obvious – by which time it is too late to effectively mitigate them. They have intense but erratic local effects, and demand forceful actions by governments. The difference is that climate change will take decades rather than months to fully reveal itself. Its effects will last for centuries, and there is no possibility of a vaccine.

Climate models consistently indicate that, in the absence of aggressive measures to keep global warming at reasonable levels, regional weather patterns almost everywhere are likely to become more erratic. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C. The report laid out steps necessary to keep the increase in global mean temperature to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. That target would be consistent with the Paris Accord of 2016, ratified by 187 countries.

If business continues as usual, or measures are inadequate and not internationally coordinated, the report offers this concise, and dismal,  prognosis for life in 2100: 

“The world as it was in 2020 is no longer recognizable, with decreased life expectancy, reduced outdoor labour productivity and lower quality of life in many regions.”

That may be a mild forecast. Subsequent research has suggested that some coastal and tropical regions in South Asia, tropical Africa, the Middle East and southern U.S.A. may actually be uninhabitable long before then.

The main purpose of the IPCC Special Report is to argue that if ‘far reaching’ mitigation measures to reduce carbon emissions are taken before 2030 this should limit future temperature increase to 1.5°C. A bleak, hot future can still be avoided. Many places around the world are already taking action, notably replacing coal and oil energy production with renewables.  Some have had an impact on places – for example, fields of solar panels and wind farms. Some are largely invisible – for example, retrofitted buildings for greater energy efficiency. Others, such as densification, are often combined with other planning strategies, so that their impacts on built environments are difficult to distinguish.

In spite of these measures, substantial gaps remain between what has been done, what governments have promised to do, and what appears to be necessary. The world probably needs more wind farms and solar fields, an end to deforestation and to greatly reduce beef and dairy farming. Radical changes to the character of urban places are also required. These include much greater densification, limited use of personal vehicles, doubling of urban forests, and the redistribution of employment and commercial activity to reduce commuting. Such urban initiatives might be possible in the new cities of Asia and Africa and, indeed, are already being adopted in many such places. They are much more difficult to implement in existing cities – be they in less or more developed regions. Substantial place legacies have a rigidity that makes anything more than incremental reform both difficult and expensive.

Even if mitigation measures are completely effective, place-based adaptations to more frequent severe weather events will be necessary, due to time lags in atmospheric processes. These have to be tailored to the new conditions of particular locations. Sea walls will be needed to combat rising sea levels in coastal cities, while only innovative new building technologies can deal with melting permafrost in the Arctic.

If mitigation measures are not effective, then the IPCC Special Report suggests that “transformational adaptations” will be needed. The most significant of these will involve the relocation of entire places from areas prone to rising sea levels and flooding. This has already been done with some small communities – and has proved to be very expensive. It may soon have to happen on a much larger scale, including in a number of world cities – or at least large sections thereof. As many as 13 million people in America might have to move elsewhere; so too more than 100 million in Africa. Where they might relocate to is unclear. Perhaps some could move to otherwise shrinking cities.

The likelihood is that the Covid-19 pandemic has shifted attention away from climate change. It is falling down the political agenda at the very time that it requires the most urgent attention. Measures already being implemented will be largely unaffected. The shift to renewable sources of energy, increasing densities, building of bike lanes and retrofitting of older buildings will continue.  But, if the assessments in the IPCC Special Report are correct, these will be insufficient to keep global warming under 3°C by 2100. Long before then, the challenges of population growth and urbanization in Africa and Asia will have been exacerbated by extreme weather. More intense droughts and heat waves around the Mediterranean will have accelerated the shrinkage and abandonment of places. Climate induced mass migrations seem inevitable.

Over the course of the 21st century extreme and unpredictable weather caused by climate warming will make everyday life increasingly stressful in places everywhere.