My plan was to post weekly, with each post discussing a social or cultural reason why timely and meaningful action to prevent severe climate change is exceedingly hard for us. I’m departing from that plan for this post.
They key event in my novel, A Change in the Weather, is the collapse of the Arctic ice cap. Only a few people are paying close attention to that possibility or understand the implications of losing that linchpin of climate stability at the top of the world. That’s what the book is about—playing out the implications.
A recent article in Climate Progress says that the Arctic has passed a tipping point and the ice cap is almost certain to disappear one summer not long from now, just as my novel suggests.
I’m not sure how to react to this. I’ve long scorned the idea that we can “adapt” to climate change. It’s like saying we can “adapt” to war. The specific damage is impossible to predict. But hard times are coming, and the worst will be the rapid dissolution of social cohesion as agriculture comes under increasing pressure. The only sensible adaptation is to make our communities as strong and politically stable as possible.
More later. This will take some time to digest.
A Change in the Weather 