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 If the two most common topics of early August conversations wearied you, prepare to be positively worn out by future summer chats.
Those of you bored with talk of the persistent heat and the even-more-persistent recession reacted appropriately. You call that a hot spell? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
And as for the Great Recession? Hah. Someday these will seem like the good old days. Just wait until we feel the full impact of another matter that many of you are sick of hearing about: climate change.
Sorry to bring it up again, but really, we need to talk about this now so we do not have to for decades to come.
It is somewhat understandable if you disbelieve all the climate science and your own sweat glands, because global warming’s consequences are awful to contemplate and even more painful to accept.
But face them we must or we will be victims of devastating and irreversible consequences.
Now I realize that saying such things gets people labeled as alarmists. So while some of you are heating up a branding iron, please read on and consider some of the climate change consequences that far too often are ignored.
We shall not dwell here on the Earth’s increasing temperature, or thawing glaciers and ice caps, or rising sea levels, or unprecedented droughts, or expanding deserts, or stranded polar bears. These are not things that might happen someday. These crises already are happening, and will get much worse.
Let us concentrate instead on what will happen when the warming hits us where we really feel it. In the pocketbook.
Critics of clean energy legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gases maintain that the result will be higher gasoline and utility costs. In the short run they are right, but the price of doing nothing will be enormous.
To get some idea of just how huge, consider a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures that examined the financial toll of climate change. Here are portions of their report concerning Kansas:
Annual losses in the state could exceed $1 billion – in large part due to the impact of warmer temperatures and reduced water supply on agriculture.
By 2032, increased flooding could cost Kansas agriculture $150 million per year, with an additional $87 million per year in other economic sectors and over 700 jobs per year.
By 2017, a 1 percent increase in the persistence of invasive species per year would cost $58 million in damages, and a loss of more than 400 jobs.
Direct and indirect costs of asthma treatment already reach more than $13 million annually in Overland Park and Kansas City, Kan. It will get worse in a hotter world.
Now, let us take a somewhat wider view provided through a similar report compiled by the University of Maryland.
It found that:
In the Great Plains (Kansas included), “the agricultural sector stands to lose $3.6 to $6.5 billion by 2030 and $6.75 to $10.13 billion by 2090 on an annual basis.”
When 1.2 million acres of U.S. forests burned in 1987, it was the first time since 1919 that so much acreage was lost. “More than 7 million acres have burned every year for the past four years, with annual suppression costs amounting to $1.4 billion.”
In the Central Valley (parts of California, Utah, Arizona and Colorado), one study predicts that from 2070 to 2099, “254,000 acres now producing crops will have to be fallowed because of water shortages, … which will generate an annual loss of $278.5 billion.” In especially dry years, which are estimated to occur 15 percent of the time during that 30-year period, the predicted annual loss is $829 million.
We could go on and on with such economic projections, and please realize that the figures above barely scratch the surface of the impacts regionally and nationally. On top of that is the astounding worldwide toll, which will affect our economy as well.
Even with all the science and the warnings, the world’s response is so woeful it should be criminal.
If you deny climate change, you simply are wrong. And if you live to see the folly of that denial, I hope you do not have grandchildren. For they will deserve an explanation of the ruined world we have bequeathed them, and the fault collectively will be ours for failing to believe and to act. That is a summertime conversation no one should have to endure.
Loren Stanton covers Overland Park, Leawood and Prairie Village for The Johnson County Sun. |
I have been involved professionally with strategic planning since 1977 when I took my first job as director of organizational development at a banking organization headquartered in St. Louis. Over the subsequent years, it is probably safe to say that I have participated in or led several hundred strategic planning sessions. In doing so, I have found it useful to distinguish between dreams, goals and plans.
