If you’re tired of endless debates about climate change, take heart. While disagreement abounds about how to reduce our impact on the world’s weather systems, who should pay and whether we’re moving fast enough (we’re not), another whole group of folks are calmly moving along to the practical side of the matter.
That is: it’s time to adapt.
Adaptation is an easier place to be, frankly. While those working on mitigating climate change struggle with the thorny questions of how to wean a whole society off of fossil fuels and material-intensive lifestyles, adaptation means preparing for a certainty. Climate change is underway, and it’s going to get more intense. Your business is likely to feel its effects. Time to plan ahead.
(This is not to say that mitigation isn’t critical. Slowing the warming enough so that we have a fighting chance is key.)
That’s why the City of Vancouver recently hosted a visit from Dr. Jason Thistlethwaite, project director for the Climate Change Adaptation Project (adaptnow.ca). The project was launched to identify and operationalize “practical, meaningful and cost-effective adaptation solutions to the most challenging impacts of climate change in Canada.”
This means getting your head around a new reality that may affect your business processes, your municipal services (roads, emergency services, infrastructure), your employees, your supply chain, your customers – or possibly all of the above.
Quoting the International Panel on Climate Change and Environment Canada, Thistlethwaite said we need to prepare for average temperature increases of up to two degrees by 2020 and four degrees by 2050. That increases the risk of:
•maximum temperatures and heat waves (virtually certain);
•precipitation events and droughts (more than 66% likely); and
•thunderstorms, tornados, hail (likely).
If this still sounds unreal, take it from the folks who pay serious attention to this stuff: the insurance industry. Lloyd’s first published a climate change report entitled Adapt or Bust in 2006, still available online and an excellent read. And Thistlethwaite’s project is funded by Intact Financial Corporation. “The insurance companies are the canaries in the coal mine,” he said. “They’re starting to chirp loudly.”
Read through the weather news and you see a rising pace of increasingly severe weather-related damage – and rising costs for insurers (one simple adaptation step you can take is to bump up your business’s future cost of insurance – that’s a given).
From wildfires through hail, flood and wind events, we’re seeing more weather damage than historic models predicted. Which explains why companies like Intact are putting their money into getting the word out about adaptation.
A priorities plan for Canada
Thistlethwaite was here as part of a tour to release Climate Change Adaptation: A Priorities Plan for Canada (available at adaptnow.ca).
In consultation with 80 area experts across the country, the researchers determined the top five most vulnerable areas for Canada, where solutions aimed at adaptation are most urgently needed.
These are: city infrastructure, biodiversity, freshwater resources, aboriginal communities and agriculture. They also identified three areas that offer the highest challenge to property and casualty insurers: new homes, existing homes and insurance pricing.
The report’s recommended action steps can largely be boiled down to one simple idea: get adaptation on everyone’s radar. That is, put it into the National Building Code so that new homes all come with a $150 backwater valve that prevents sewer backup (and flooding during heavy rain).
Get farmers planning for climate change. For city managers, prioritize areas of high climate change risk and figure out what can be done.
For your business, it’s worth at least taking a morning coffee and starting your thinking. What if your supply chain was delayed by 10 days due to flooding? What if your employees couldn’t make it to work reliably for a week? What if food prices increase 20% due to shortages? How will you maintain production and customer service?
One message was certainly clear – this is a challenge that will require cross-sectoral collaboration. If you depend on good roads and reliable municipal services, it’s a good time to make sure your governments are paying attention to this. Yes, we need all the mitigation we can get if we hope to avoid the really grim potential of climate change. Meanwhile, let’s get on with building the best future we can as things change.
“Climate change is a big, complex, super-wicked problem that everyone has a hard time wrapping their head around,” said Thistlethwaite.
Getting practical about it helps.
