"El Niño Is Coming—and the World Isn’t Prepared"

A pithy summary of upcoming climate impacts. Facing unpleasantness can help us mitigate it, and plan for keeping ourselves, our families, and our communities safer.

Illustration: by Yo Hosoyamada - Wired

Read the article: “El Niño Is Coming—and the World Isn’t Prepared” in Wired.

Welcome to the inaugural post in the "Informed Adult" newsletter, which recognizes that adulting is hard, and which seeks to build community via shorter posts that boost understanding of critical real-world competencies. This article falls under the “Climate science literacy” competency of praxis-based education.

Today's article is from Wired magazine. I found it through the SmartNews app—where I find many worthwhile articles—which allows phone-based viewing; I can read the article for free on my laptop (Mozilla, with an ad-blocking extension). Wired has a $5 subscription promotion right now—recommended.

The author is Bill McGuire (@ProfBillMcGuire), a volcanologist and Emeritus Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London.

Summary

An end to La Niña cooling ocean patterns is upcoming in 2023. “La Niña will end and eventually transition into the better-known El Niño, which sees the waters of the equatorial Pacific becoming much warmer. When it does, the extreme weather that has rampaged across our planet in 2021 and 2022 will pale into insignificance.”

Look out for increased drought, “slashing crop yields in many parts of the world. In 2022, extreme weather resulted in reduced harvests in China, India, South America, and Europe, increasing food insecurity…another round of poor harvests could be devastating. Resulting food shortages in most countries could drive civil unrest, while rising prices in developed countries will continue to stoke inflation and the cost-of-living crisis.”

Look for increased hurricane activity: “Hurricanes today are both more powerful and wetter, so that the consequences of a city getting in the way of a superstorm in 2023 would likely be cataclysmic.”

What Do You Think?

Learning is nudged by engaging deeply with information, so:

1. What should cities in the U.S. Southwest—and people living there—do to prepare for critical water shortages?

2. What climate impacts is your community prone to?

3. What can your town do to prepare for climate impacts and/or accommodate more people moving from climate-impacted areas?

4. How can you modify your diet to require less water-intensive foods?
   
   

What to Do? (Pick 1-3)

1. Cut back on almonds. Institute a Meatless Monday routine, if you are not already vegetarian/vegan (boosts health, too).

2. Attend a city council meeting and get a (better) sense of your community’s decision-makers.

3. Ask to see your city/county’s climate change adaptation/mitigation plan (mitigation: reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something).

4. Review the good news about climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

5. Enter your address at Open States and create a personal document with contact information for your federal and state elected officials. A website search for your county and municipality will yield info on local elected officials.

6. Share the article above (via email, Facebook, or Twitter, for example) with three elected officials. For instance: “This brief article from Wired magazine highlights what is at stake regarding climate action. Please vote wisely and with courage to protect our food security and lessen extreme weather.” Thank federal representatives for voting for the IRA, and chide them if they didn’t. Their voting records are available at ProPublica’s Represent Project (enter your zip code; click on a congressperson’s name for voting record details).

7. Record this article and your time spent on political activity on the Triple-2 tracker spreadsheet. Triple-2 is my project for helping people commit to a reasonable, yet impactful, amount of weekly political engagement.
   

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Please comment below with your reflections and actions taken.

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The Inflation Reduction Act (from one-page summary document):

• Enacts historic deficit reduction to fight inflation
• Lowers energy costs, increases cleaner production, and reduces carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030
• Allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices and caps out-of-pocket costs to $2,000
• Lowers ACA health care premiums for millions of Americans
• Make biggest corporations and ultra-wealthy pay their fair share
• There are no new taxes on families making $400,000 or less and no new taxes on small businesses – we are closing tax loopholes and enforcing the tax code.