Bill McKibben published a must-read op-ed in The Washington Post last month about the connection between climate change and recent extreme weather events. Now Stephen Thomson has combined McKibben’s words with striking footage of the events he writes about. The result is a chilling must-see video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCY-3XnqS0
It’s time to start connecting the dots. I am glad Bill McKibben wrote the article he did, and I am thankful Stephen Thomson converted it to an easy to absorb video, as I was planning on writing something along the same lines. Far too often I hear people saying “there have been large storms before”, “there have been severe floods before”, “there have been giant hurricanes before”, “their have been severe droughts before” … but what they aren’t taking into consideration is the fact that these types of typically isolated weather events are happening in much greater frequency, but more importantly, they are happening all over the planet, NOW. Not one, isolated, bigger than normal natural disaster, but a series of bigger than normal natural disasters happening, well, everywhere. Every country on every continent (and yes even in Antarctica) is experiencing abnormal and catastrophic weather. So it isn’t simply a case of a single isolated severe weather event happening, but it is a case that severe weather is quickly becoming the norm for our once ‘stable’ climate. And again, not just for us in North America, severe weather is affecting the entire planet. In fact The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in a recent study discovered that natural disasters have more than doubled in the last two decades. Elisabeth Rasmusson, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council:
The intensity and frequency of extreme weather events is increasing, and this trend is only set to continue. With all probability, the number of those affected and displaced will rise as human-induced climate change comes into full force.
Speaking at the Oslo conference, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres called the issue of climate-related displacement “the defining challenge of our times” and criticized the international community for lacking the political will to reduce to pace of climate change.
There is increasing evidence to suggest that natural disasters are growing in frequency and intensity and that this is linked to the longer-term process of climate change.
As they said in the video, I think we have a lot more to be concerned about than $4 a gallon gasoline.