Changing with the climate: the planet adapts and humans resist
Moving back to Nova Scotia, I was very excited about the storms. We have always had “wicked storms” as they say. Most of the winters I remember have had multiple storms with 90km/hr winds and snow banks up to the electrical wires. Occasionally, in late summer or early fall a stray hurricane would make its way up the eastern seaboard and turn into a post-tropical storm with heavy rains and winds. Those were exciting but rarely harmful.
In recent years, the warming ocean has meant milder winters, fewer snow days, more rain, warmer temperatures, and fall storms. When our first hurricane of 2022, Hurricane Fiona, was making her way across the ocean, I was ready! My adrenaline was pumping. I was strapping down furniture, checking the foundation, getting batteries and filling up the cat food cupboard. It was enough for me, but not for thousands of others. Homes and landscapes were completely decimated by the storm. Our home is well protected on the lee side of a hill, so we were fine, but my loved ones lost outbuildings, barns, an entire tree farm, and had no power for up to two weeks. At least 31 people died from Guadeloupe to Newfoundland. It was, by far, the scariest storm I’ve ever experienced. And I’ve been through a tornado.
Although this change has been happening over several years, here in Nova Scotia we are still treating wearing summer jackets during this green Christmas as an exception rather than the rule. We call to each other at the store, pointing at the sky, “Can you believe this?” as if we had never heard of climate change before.
We have been warned for decades, as we climb closer to that 1.5ºC limit of sustainable global warming, that this would happen. Our coasts would be flooded. We would lose critical infrastructure. And here we are. Yet we still resist the need to adapt because of, what? Nostalgia?
I personally believe there was and always will be a Divine spark that ignites the ecosystem of the universe. From an abstract chemical reaction, and 30 million years of subsequent reactions, life began. From that beginning, life has grown, shrunk, disappeared, and come back as something new over and over and over again, always changing and adapting.
Within all this life, there’s us. This one little species that, for many reasons, just refuses to adapt to the real circumstances all around us. While polar bears change their diets, trees expand networks, table corals build a resistance to coral bleaching, and salmon alter their migratory cycles, we continue to build homes on fragile coastlines, fill our landfills, and burn our fuels. And our refusal to adapt alters the system, placing the burden on all other life. As if our resistance will cool the earth back down. I really struggle to understand the resistance to adapt, especially when our survival is at risk. (Cue rant on capitalism and greed.)
How can we address our human resistance to adaptation? Where does that resistance come from? Could dealing with that help us adapt to ever greater climate change?
