[MCN] A plausible-enough scenario of what's ahead for the young: Just my take, likely not the last word

[Lance Olsen]

Extended excerpt : We don’t need more data. Scientific research is still a good thing, but we’re long past the day when the call for more research can be used as an excuse for delay. Enough is already known to give us all the reason we need for taking action.

The basics are already clear enough. 

For humans, the potential for killing heat starts to kick in at around 104F, and the risk of dying increases as temperatures climb higher. One study found that risk of death “increased up to 51 percent for every degree above 106F”  <https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/24/2/190/535042>and that “preventive efforts are complicated by the short time interval that may elapse between high temperature exposure and death.” 

Physical exertion heightens the risk, and we’re already seeing healthy teens killed, often suddenly, by high school football practice in summer heat <https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20072018/high-school-football-practice-heat-stroke-exhaustion-deaths-state-rankings-health-safety>. 

As of June 22, 2017, the distinguished science journal Nature could tell its readers that, “A death zone is creeping over the surface of Earth, gaining a little more ground each year,” <https://www.nature.com/news/heatwaves-to-soar-above-the-hot-air-of-climate-politics-1.22164> Nature referred its readers to a study published by sister journal, Nature Climate Change. That study found that outdoor “deadly heat” already affects 30 percent of the human population at least 20 days a year <https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3322>. 

One day of deadly heat is bad enough to push a kid into potentially lethal “heat exhaustion.” <https://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid-heat-exhaustion/basics/art-20056651>

By the twentieth day of deadly heat waves, risks soar. But the Nature Climate Change article also found that, even with “drastic” reductions of emissions, deadly heat will be affecting 48 percent of the human population for at least 20 days a year. 

That’s the best case scenario for the next 1,000 years. Without the major reductions, 75 percent of the human population will be affected by deadly outdoor heat for the next 1,000 years. Is avoiding that risk too much to ask?

The authors conclude that “An increasing threat to human life from excess heat now seems almost inevitable, but will be greatly aggravated if greenhouse gases are not considerably reduced.”  The upshot is that many of today’s kids will, in their lifetimes, likely risk their adult lives by going outside to work in construction, farming, forestry, or landscaping. The simple joys of outdoor camping will became hazards to avoid.

Staying indoors won’t guarantee safety. As heat intensifies outdoors, it brings risk of mortality indoors, too. Not every family can afford an air conditioner, and heat waves have a proven record of creating so much demand that delivery of electricity fails, shutting off air conditioners across large areas. A May 2019 study found that, just in the US, 50 million household are at risk of indoor “heat disaster." <https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab0bb9/pdf>

Heat ushers in a plethora of risk

The effects of heat’s sprawl across broader reaches of Earth don’t stop with the direct threat of death. The effects also include the spread of disease-bearing insects moving into regions that used to be too cold for them. In their lifetimes, today’s teens and toddlers will increasingly be at risk from mosquitoes carrying Zika virus, West Nile virus, Chikungunya virus, dengue, and malaria <https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/outdoor/mosquito-borne/default.html>. Even when these diseases aren’t lethal, they can be debilitating, sapping health and energy. 

Indirect threats to kids don’t stop there. As heat melts polar and mountain glacial ice, millions of kids will be swept up in increasing need to run from shores of rising seas. Now add heightened heat-driven risk of life-threatening wildfires across grasslands, scrublands, and forests. And we can’t ignore that hotter oceans are already losing capacity to hold enough oxygen to keep fish alive to feed kids and adults alike. As if that was not enough, we’ve been forcing the oceans toward acid, and that too is going to slash the supply side of food we could have expected from the oceans. 

Add, too, heat-driven drought created by using the atmosphere as a CO2 dump is increasingly likely to make key food crops unimaginably scarce. A recent study published by the distinguished journal Nature predicts “unprecedented” drying of “large agricultural areas,’ with “severe consequences” for humans — within the next 10 years. <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-05/eiac-ssf042919.php>

This will hit the babies born today by the time they get to their 10th birthdays. And if drought doesn’t strip food off their tables, floods will. Data from the past three decades suggest that excessive rainfall can affect US corn crop yield as much as excessive heat and drought <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/uoia-era043019.php>. Then, each of these  studies found confirmation when another study looked broadly across heat waves, drought, and flood impact on corn, rice, soy and spring wheat across the world. The researchers cite evidence of crop decline up to 43 percent  with heat playing a globally “dominant role. <https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab154b/pdf>”

Any one of these above repercussions of packing the atmosphere with CO2 brings its own clout over the future lives of children. Add them up, and it’s no wonder then that more and more people around the world are talking out loud and in public about climate catastrophe, climate crisis, climate danger, climate emergency.  When thousands of wild bats simply fell dead from extreme heat in Australia, there was even talk of a “killer climate.” <http://theconversation.com/killer-climate-tens-of-thousands-of-flying-foxes-dead-in-a-day-23227>

Who’s responsible?

Yes, for sure, the corporations absolutely must get their act together to keep the kids from taking brutal hits. They bear clear responsibility for the emissions driving us all into dangerous heat, so they have to shoulder their own share of responsibility for softening the beating that kids will take from heat. But we had better not fall into the trap of thinking that that gets the rest of us off the hook. 

The IPCC report on avoiding heat at 1.5C higher than pre-industrial times said we have to begin “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society <https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments>.” Note the word all in the reference to all aspects of society. That means responsibility for protecting the kids from catastrophe comes right on down to household, personal, individual level, including unprecedented steps, taken soon. 

Just the reference to far-reaching change means that individuals and households will have to make many changes, not just the most convenient few. In her invited address to the European Parliament, Greta Thumberg cited IPCC’s reference to “all aspects of society,” and told Parliament members that “Everyone and everything has to change <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgLFuyD1Y44>.” Then she said it again. “Everyone and everything has to change.” 

https://mountainjournal.org/with-climate-change-adults-embrace-me-first-over-future-of-offspring <https://mountainjournal.org/with-climate-change-adults-embrace-me-first-over-future-of-offspring>

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The poorest half of the world population is responsible for “only around 10% of total global emissions attributed to individual consumption.”

<<https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf <https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf>>> 

That leaves the rest of us responsible for about 90% of consumption-driven emissions. 

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"The big challenge is still to deliver emissions reductions at the pace and scale needed, especially in a world where economies are driven by consumption.”

Sonja van Renssen.The inconvenient truth of failed climate policies. Nature Climate Change  MAY 2018
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“… the serious meaning in a concept lies in the difference it will make to someone if it is true.”

William James (1842 –1910)
Pragmatism. Meridian Books, 1955

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