- Title
- Comparing catastrophes : the influence of impacts and timelines on prioritising crises
- Creator
- Gell, Peter
- Date
- 2023
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/194254
- Identifier
- vital:18325
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0125153
- Identifier
- ISSN:0094-243X
- Abstract
- Across time society has been confronted with a wide range of crises that have required measured responses. The COVID-19 pandemic was widely forecast, but governmental preparation was lacking. Even when it was spreading, its risks to society were downplayed in some quarters. The climate change crisis has also been widely forecast, and preparation has been slow, with vested interests also denying the science or downplaying the risk. The pandemic is an acute crisis with rapid onset and highly visible impacts on human life and wellbeing. Through vaccine technology, however, there is a short term and likely effective management measure available. Climate change is a diffuse crisis with long lead times. In contrast to Covid, it has momentum and, once thresholds are exceeded, measures to reverse the change will have limited effectiveness. While the implications of carbonising our atmosphere were known over 50 years ago, the socio-economic response is only now taking hold. The slow nature of this crisis has subdued the political response, and the Earth is now committed to considerable impacts, even if we collectively act decisively now. The gradual nature of this crisis, its opaque direct impacts on humanity, and the scale of its complexity render it a ‘wicked’ problem that will persist through this century and beyond. Scenarios of impact across multiple quarters assure us that the costs of unabated climate change will result in a global scale crisis, played out in many individual locations for many decades. Aware of this, society is already investing in adapting to the changes that are foreseen while also beginning the process of mitigating carbon emissions to limit the scale of the challenge. In some places, this may mean preparing economies for drier climates, while in others, it may mean a managed retreat from the present coastline. Providing refuge from heatwaves will be a widespread adaptation measure. For nature, its capacity to adapt will be strengthened if the pressure from humans is also mitigated.
- Publisher
- AIP
- Relation
- AIP Conference Proceedings Vol. 2683, no. 1 (2023), p. 030001
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- Copyright AIP publishing
- Subject
- Climate change; Carbonization; Coronaviruses
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