As global temperatures continue to rise, the planet is experiencing unprecedented environmental shifts that threaten ecosystems, disrupt communities and put public safety at risk. The recent destruction in Florida caused by Hurricane Milton has raised concerns that extreme weather events will become more frequent in the near future.
While some argue that climate change isn’t a major concern, Bill McKibben, author, educator, environmentalist and founder of 350.org, said immediate action is needed.
“We’ve seen a rapid increase in the plant’s temperature, caused by burning fossil fuels,” McKibben said. “This global warming is the biggest thing that humans have ever done. … The poles are melting, and the great ocean currents are beginning to falter. Warm air holds more water vapor than cold, so we’re seeing more droughts, wildfires, downpours and floods.”
Extreme weather patterns have been linked to a climate phenomenon: El Niño. Professor of Earth and Climate Science at Columbia University Dr. Mark Cane said El Niño is the warming of the ocean waters in the tropical Pacific which has led to several weather events worldwide.
“What matters to us is that [El Niño] changes the weather in many places, leading to disasters like droughts in India, parts of China and the Central United States,” Cane said.
Even though it’s still being debated whether or not climate change is directly strengthening El Niño events, Cane said the amount of large storms has increased in recent years.
“I recently did a study with a friend who’s a world expert on climate signals from tree rings,” Cane said. “Together we did a reconstruction of tree rings and the state of the Tropical Pacific back to 1100 AD and it seems like the frequency of big events increased in recent years in a way that’s not unprecedented but highly unusual.”
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, research based on satellite data has indicated that global warming has been melting ice caps at an average of 150 billion tons per year, which raises sea levels.
“We’re already getting heavier rains with global warming, and we’re beginning to see a rising sea level,” Cane said. “Some things are really hard to undo; if you melt the glaciers they won’t grow back that fast.”
While climate change can affect coastal cities, it can also put smaller inland cities like Nixa at risk. In Missouri, flash flooding is a cause of disaster-related fatalities. According to the State Emergency Management Agency, severe storms claimed 27 lives in 2015, with nearly half of those deaths occurring for vehicles caught in flood waters. Such numbers cause increasing concerns for Nixa residents as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicts an increase in danger as precipitation continues to rise by 5-10 percent annually.
Cane said that addressing climate change doesn’t have to mean sacrifice.
“You don’t have to give up a lot because you gain a lot of other things,” Cane said. “If we got rid of fossil fuels then we would have clean air, we would live longer and better.”
Debbie Raphael, a board member of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, attended a conference in Minneapolis where city leaders discussed government action to improve local resilience during extreme weather events.
Not all proposed climate solutions are effective. Raphael said “false solutions” are ideas marketed as beneficial but may fail to address the root issues of climate change and that some solutions made by fuel companies, don’t go far enough to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
“There’s a big misconception that there are ways we can put in solutions that don’t require us to get rid of fossil fuels,” Raphael said.
Raphael said Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), an example of a false solution, is a method promoted by oil companies as a way to capture emissions from fossil fuels.
“They claim CCS can capture carbon from smokestacks and store it underground but there’s so much carbon released during the extraction process that capturing emissions from smokestacks is nothing compared to the methane released during extraction,” Raphael said.
While some would argue that climate change shouldn’t be among the nation’s top concerns, Earth.org, a global environmental movement, reports that methane traps heat at 80 times the rate of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
“[CCS] is incredibly harmful in terms of global warming,” Raphael said. “CCS is like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.”
Raphael and other city leaders are focusing on practical, community-based solutions. Raphael said one approach is resilience hubs. These hubs are equipped with solar panels and battery backups, providing local communities with power and essential resources during extreme weather events when federal support is delayed.
“With disasters, the federal government is going to be stretched in a lot of different directions, and so will the state and the communities first responders,” Raphael said. “So, it’s going to come down to the neighborhood level.”
Raphael said that local action alone isn’t enough without alignment at higher government levels.
“One of the real challenges that cities face is not that they don’t know what to do, but that there isn’t an alignment between different types of government to get it done,” Raphael said.
For communities like Nixa, the cost of inaction could be high.
“What scares me the most is cynicism and apathy,” Raphael said. “It is the most dangerous aspect in terms of urgency. We need everyone to lean in, not be cynical and give up.”