Earth Today | Picking up the climate tab

AS TEMPERATURES continue to climb and the train to climate departure gathers speed, climate change is hitting pockets and chequebooks hard, though many may not yet be connecting the dots.

In a recent interview with The Gleaner, Prof Michael Taylor, a celebrated climate scientist and head of The Faculty of Science and Technology at The University of the West Indies, Mona, explained:

“The truth is that we don’t recognise it, but we are paying for climate change. Our salaries are not going far enough any more. We are paying more for electricity; we are [also] taking our children to the doctor more, whether because of an asthma attack or the heat,” he said.

“The food prices are going up because the farmers are not producing in these kinds of adverse conditions (droughts and extreme hurricanes), or the price of food is going up because they have to pay more to produce the food. The businesses that you utilise, because of a greater overhead because of electricity, is now passing that on to you, the customer,” the physicist added.

“We are now individually paying for the cost of climate change. And you are not even beginning to think about the climate-vulnerable: the poor, the homeless, the security guard, the doctors who have to see more patients ...,” Taylor said further.

Climate change, which is fuelled by human consumption of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane – produced from coal use, for example, and animal husbandry, respectively – presents varied impacts.

These include increasing temperatures and associated health problems; extreme hurricanes and droughts and the associated impacts on key industries, such as tourism and agriculture and fisheries; as well as rising sea levels and the resulting coastal erosion and compromised freshwater resources.

These realities, in turn, force adjustments from members of society, who must change in order to cope – even beyond the requirement for scaled-up efforts to limit the production of greenhouse gases.

These changes are taking place at the level of many households, where there is, for example, increased consumption of electricity as people install air conditioning units or run their fans more in order to cope with the heat stress – and that comes with a cost.

“You just keep running,” quipped Taylor.

“The climate bills are just mounting, and you don’t realise you are paying for it,” he added.

Together with climate departure – the point at which the world reaches a new normal for average temperature – the impacts being felt, he said, require urgent and sustained intervention here in Jamaica, as elsewhere in other small island developing states, which are among the most vulnerable.

Those efforts, Taylor noted, should include an occupational health and safety policy and/or plan that governs how various social institutions – from school to the workplace – respond when temperatures become unbearable.

“Our schools are not designed for this. How do you expect education and learning to take place? What about the productivity of your workers? What about the bigger question of an occupational health and safety policy?” queried the physicist, who was among the lead authors for the seminal Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“We need those policies to protect our schools and places of work. At what point, for example, should we put out an alert to say ‘nobody should go outdoors’?” he added.

Also required, Taylor explained, is an intentional look at financing for interventions beyond the level of households.

“What are the adaptation options we see across sectors if this is what we are going to face? What is the kind of climate financing we are going to need, how should it look, and how easily accessible should it be? What are the kinds of things we need to finance?” he questioned.

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