The raging wildfires in Southern California and the wettest winter in a century in Northern California earlier in 2017 are the worst for the state in recent memory. But they are part of a new pattern across the Pacific that has seen a rise in extreme events in Australia, Pacific islands, Japan, Vietnam and elsewhere this year. While multiple factors, from soil erosion to unregulated urbanization, help turn hazards into disasters, runaway global warming is proving to be a tipping point for catastrophes. It's time for politics, economics and the media to deepen actions on the new climate reality.
Droughts, fires, storms and floods are the most tangible impact of climate change today. Scientists are reluctant to attribute a particular event like the 2017 Southern California fires or the southwest floods in Japan, but they associate the rise in weather-related episodes over decades with higher temperatures from increased greenhouse gases in the air. Scientists warn that runaway climate change could decimate more than three fourth of the fish in the Pacific Islands region.
The key implication for society is to connect the dots and see the emerging picture — human activity leading to atmospheric emissions, global warming and extreme weather in locations — much as in the 1950s, the environmental links to air pollution were discerned in Los Angeles or London and water pollution in Kumamoto, spurring environmental movements. Doing so would mean a shift from thinking about disasters as one-off, acts of God to systematic happenings influenced by the human hand. The implied response would not only be to clean up but also to prevent.