Everything Is Unprecedented. Welcome To Your Hotter Earth
The upshot of climate change is that everyone alive is destined to experience
unprecedented disasters. The most powerful hurricanes, the most intense wildfires, the most prolonged heat waves and the most frequent outbreaks of new diseases are all in our future. Records will be broken, again and again.
But the predicted destruction is still shocking when it unfolds at the same time.
This week, Americans are living through concurrent disasters. In California, more than 200,000 people were under evacuation orders because of wildfires, and millions are breathing smoky air. On the Gulf Coast, people weathered a tropical storm at the beginning of the week. Two days later, about half a million were ordered to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Laura. We're six months into a global pandemic, and the Earth is on track to have one of its hottest years on record.
Climate scientist Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii says if our collective future were a movie, this week would be the trailer.
"There is not a single ending that is good," he says. "There's not going to be a happy ending to this movie."