When it comes to climate change, is there a point when adaptation isn't enough?

0:00Hi there, it's Sasha Pfeiffer. It's been about a year since the historic vote to eliminate all federal funding for public media, and we want to say thank you for sticking with us and for sticking with us to keep you informed. We take that trust seriously, and we're grateful. NPR exists because of people like you who believe the world is better with public media in it. We cannot do this without you. If you haven't given to support public media this month, it's not too late. Visit donate.npr.org and thank you. Now to today's show. It's Consider This where every day we go deep on one big news story.

0:40Today, is climate adaptation enough? Firefighters are battling wildfires across large swaths of Europe. That's the latest weather event on a continent that has experienced a lot of heat this summer. Scientists say that's created conditions that make wildfires more likely. And Europe really is having a brunt of climate change impacts. Scott Stevens is a professor of fire science and forest policy at UC Berkeley. He spoke to CBS News on Thursday. No doubt we've got to solve climate change. But we also know that just the gases in the atmosphere right now, even if we do a great job of reducing, it could be there for decades.

1:17For decades. Consider this. Wildfires in Europe have caused hundreds of thousands of people to move in the span of just a few days. What happens when climate change becomes so disruptive that humans cannot adapt fast enough?

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2:54It's Consider This from NPR. All this week, we've been reporting on the catastrophic wildfires happening in Western Europe, especially France and Spain and now Greece. One line in the media coverage really stood out to me. A European scientist said all this heat and all these fires are likely to only get worse in the future to the point, he said, that we will be, quote, passing the limits of adaptation. I wondered what that looks like. So we've called him to ask. Johann Rockström is director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, and he noted that 200-some years since the Industrial Revolution, the Earth has remained fairly resilient, but that is changing.

3:3890 % of the heat caused by our fossil fuel burning is not in the atmosphere, causing the temperature rise which has led us to the climate crisis we see today. It's in the ocean. 50 % of the carbon dioxide from the greenhouse gases we add is not in the atmosphere, trapping heat, it's actually stored half of it in the ocean and half of it on land. So a healthy planet has this extraordinary biogeophysical capacity to buffer and dampen, basically cool the planet. We're seeing, unfortunately, increasing indicators of our planet losing this capacity. Not that we've crossed the tipping point, but forest systems are getting weaker and no longer able to take up as much carbon.

4:22The ocean is warming faster than we had expected. Ice is melting faster than we had expected. This is a stress response of a planet that is trying to do everything it can to buffer and dampen change. And when we come closer to the end of this capacity, then, of course, the risk is very high that the impacts hit back even harder on our societies. And what does that look like for humans? If we reach these limits, what does it mean for people on Earth? To begin with, what it looks like is that we will have more shocks of what we're experiencing right now in Europe. Remember that we are experiencing, in places that have never recorded it before, life-threatening temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius.

5:06So that's the first thing. The second is droughts, floods, fires that risk food security and even social stability. we are at risk of triggering more disease outbreaks, even pandemics, which then spills over into less and less stable economies and therefore also less and less stable societies, moving into situations of displacement, migration, potentially even armed conflicts. And we see the first indications of this in countries like Sudan, Syria, Chad, where you cannot separate anymore the social conflicts and displacements and people suffering from these environmental changes. There are, of course, many countries worldwide trying to make changes like emissions reductions.

5:59But to what extent do you think those attempted fixes are still enough versus humans are simply going to have to make drastic changes like not being able to live in certain places? The window is still open to avoid the most catastrophic outcomes. And what I mean by catastrophic is the point where fires, drought and heat waves become so difficult to handle that communities simply have to move out. And that is what worries me most today, that we're allowing ourselves to look at these extreme events and continue to kick the can down the road and not acting. And that can take us into real danger. So what should we do?

6:36One has to recognize that the transition is challenging. I mean, we've been for 200 years powering the global economy with fossil fuels and unsustainable production systems. Now we need to very rapidly move away from fossil fuels, oil, coal and gas. We need to move into circular economic models and we need to have sustainable ways of managing our oceans, our forests, our wetlands, our peatlands. We know all this. We even have solutions on how to scale sustainable production and consumption practices. And still, we're not moving fast enough. This is a very doomsday topic, but I watched a YouTube video of a lecture you gave on this.

7:16And in it, you are matter of fact, but you're also fairly upbeat. How do you maintain that sense of positivity and good cheer when the news you're delivering is so alarming? Yeah, the advancements in science and our extraordinary ability today to measure down to the single tree and fish in the ocean, the state of the planet, is a tremendous value. And that risk assessment is not there to scare us. Risk assessment is to avoid doing the wrong things. I assume those risk assessments are also meant to motivate us. Absolutely. And, you know, when you think of it, in all other paths of our life, health risks, or if it is risks to our economy, or if it's risk to our house burning down, we are concerned.

8:06We buy insurance. We want information. Why aren't we, you know, seeing risk assessments as a way of ensuring that we can hand over a stable, resilient, life-supporting, livable planet to our children? Johan Rockström is director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Thank you, and thanks for your positivity on this issue. Thanks for inviting me. This episode was produced by Michelle Aslam and Karen Zamora, with audio engineering by Ted Meebane. Our director is Jonas Adams. It was edited by Mallory Yu and Tinbeet Ermias. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dornan.

8:47It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sasha Pfeiffer. This week on Sources and Methods, missiles cost money and the Pentagon is running low on both. One of the concerns for the Middle East, Qatar and Kuwait and other locations, maybe Saudi, is are there enough Patriot missiles to go around to protect their bases? The State of the U.S. Arsenal, this week on Sources and Methods, the National Security Podcast from NPR. On this season of Planet Money Summer School, we follow the money. And not just the dollars. We're following the yuan, the naira, the krona, and more. Every Wednesday this summer, we're taking you on a world tour to meet the people, trying new solutions to old economic problems.

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