A new book, 'Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change...' could hold lessons for the energy emergency
into the atmosphere, with potentially huge societal consequences. Linden introduces a useful framework for thinking about what came next: four clocks. The first tracks climate change in real time; the clock’s hands advance with every climate-driven storm, drought, flood and other extreme event. Each of the three other clocks lags behind the first at different speeds.
In the 1990s, the scientific clock was doing pretty well. Researchers extracted long cores of ice from the Greenland ice sheet, solidifying their understanding of how abruptly the climate has changed in the past. Sadly society did not keep pace. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the former Soviet states missed the opportunity to decarbonize rapidly. Emerging nations, too, failed to leapfrog dirty energy supplies and go straight to cleaner sources of power.
Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, as global temperatures rose and extreme weather events became more common, insurance companies continued to underwrite policies in the communities most at risk. Here are the fires and the floods of the title, many affecting the most vulnerable communities. Urban heat, exacerbated by climate change, hits hardest along racial and ethnic lines. Sea-level rise drowns not only beach homes of the affluent but also poorer neighbourhoods with little coastal protection.
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