“For many people, 2021 was the year in which climate change jumped from the part of our brains reserved for future-think — for worries not yet realized — and landed squarely in the now,” Sabrina Shankman wrote in The Boston Globe recently. “It was the year that extreme heat rolled into wildfires into poor air quality into endless downpours and flash floods. No more future tense. 2021 was the year that climate change entered the present.”
“I think the word ‘unprecedented’ got a real workout this year,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist and acting deputy director at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
That word certainly applies to the weather experienced last year in Lytton, British Columbia. The scenic village near the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson rivers endured one catastrophe after another. Last summer, a day after Lytton set Canada’s all-time heat record of 121 degrees, a fast-moving wildfire tore through the area, devouring scores of homes, The Washington Post reported. Then, in December, flooding brought on by torrential rain washed out main roads to the north and south of Lytton. “I used to think that it was going to be the next generation that was going to have to deal with climate change. I think otherwise now,” Mayor Jan Polderman said. “It’s something we better start dealing with sooner than later.”
South of Lytton, the U.S. Pacific Northwest took a beating from the same heat dome, The Post’s Sarah Kaplan and Brady Dennis wrote. “It scorched crops, melted pavement, and cooked a billion sea creatures inside their own shells. Hospitals saw 69 times the usual number of emergency room visits; one facility put patients in body bags filled with ice in a desperate effort to bring their internal temperatures down. More than 1,000 people died.”
“Scrolling through the list of 2021's billion dollar disasters in the U.S. reads like a tour through the Book of Revelation,” Axios’ Andrew Freedman wrote. More than 4 in 10 Americans live in a county that was struck by climate-related extreme weather last year, according to a new Washington Post analysis of federal disaster declarations, and more than 80 percent experienced a heat wave.
“People are suffering and dying unnecessarily,” said Kristie Ebi, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Then there’s the financial toll. The world’s 10 costliest weather disasters of 2021 caused more than $170 billion worth of damage, according to a new report from UK-based Christian Aid.
According to Steve Bowen, head of catastrophe insight on the impact forecasting team at insurer Aon, 2021 is expected to be the sixth time extreme weather catastrophes have cost more than $100 billion — all of which have happened in the last decade.
Add to that the damage that global warming does to various economic sectors. Sixty percent of the nation’s downhill skiing capacity lies on National Forest lands, where wildfire is a growing threat to the $788 billion outdoor industry. “I always thought climate was going to take the industry out, for sure, but due to warming, shorter seasons and spring meltdown,” Auden Schendler, Aspen Skiing Company’s senior vice president for sustainability, told The New York Times’ Tim Neville. “I now believe the way we’re going down is through fire.”
No relief is in sight. Last month’s temperatures averaged across the state of Texas made it that state’s warmest December, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said in a statement. It is also likely to be the first month to exceed the 20th-century average by more than 10°F.
Scientists say there's reason to expect even more menacing extreme weather disasters in 2022, Freedman reported: “This past year brought the uncomfortable realization that even scientists' worst-case scenarios don't fully capture what the climate system is already capable of.”
"It seems as if models do underestimate those extremes and particularly these scenarios are really hard to predict and also to prepare for," said Kai Kornhuber, a climate scientist at Columbia University.
Most Americans, polls show, want the federal government to respond to this threat. We urge Congress to pass the Build Back Better bill–now–and also tax the carbon dioxide emissions that are the primary cause of global warming.