January 24, 2025<\/p>\n
4 min read<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
We\u2019re Living in a Dystopian Climate Thriller. It’s Time to Rewrite the Ending<\/p>\n
Decades of warnings went ignored about the threats from climate change. With homes everywhere now burning, flooding and washing away, it\u2019s time we start listening to scientists\u2019 climate solutions<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
By Peter H. Gleick<\/a> edited by Daniel Vergano<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n A motorcyclist stops to look at a burning home during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles county, California on January 8, 2025.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Josh Edelson\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Bleak visions of a dystopian future offered up by science-fiction writers, TV shows and Hollywood disaster movies are no longer fiction. Real floods<\/a>, droughts<\/a>, wildfires<\/a> and coastal storms<\/a> happening now\u2014notably the catastrophic fires<\/a> that have devastated Los Angeles\u2014are a stark wake-up call. Our refusal to aggressively cut greenhouse-gas emissions isn\u2019t a problem for some distant uncertain future; it has become our present-day reality.<\/p>\n It is time to disavow climate denial and accelerate building disaster resilience in our cities and homes.<\/p>\n It’s not as though we weren\u2019t warned. Climate scientists have been sounding the alarm<\/a> about growing climate risks for decades<\/a>. Despite repeated warnings, we have failed to adequately mitigate or adapt to climate change. As the popular meme goes, \u201cWe are in the midst of the longest, saddest, most excruciating and unsatisfying \u2018I told you so\u2019 in the history of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing<\/a>. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n In 1969 Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a memo on these risks<\/a> to President Nixon, warning of a \u201cGoodbye New York,\u201d 10-foot sea level rise. But he was ignored. In 1977 Frank Press, science advisor to President Carter, wrote of the scale and speed of the impending change to the climate<\/a>: \u201cThe potential effect on the environment of a climatic fluctuation of such rapidity could be catastrophic and calls for an impact assessment of unprecedented importance and difficulty.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2007, at the release of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report summarizing the state of climate science knowledge, Harvard\u2019s John Holdren (who later became science advisor to President Barack Obama), said<\/a>: \u201cWe basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. We\u2019re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps, like me, you\u2019re a fan of the many good (and sometimes bad) TV shows and movies that hint at dystopian futures where aliens, extreme geophysical events or other catastrophes wreak havoc on cities, societies or the planet as a whole. Los Angeles is a popular target in many of these films, for its iconic status and, probably, because the entertainment industry is centered there. The city is leveled in the 1974 film Earthquake<\/i>, starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner. Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche race around L.A. as it is consumed in flames in 1997\u2019s Volcano<\/i>. Tornadoes wipe out the iconic Hollywood sign and the Capitol Records building during the global climate catastrophe in 2004\u2019s The Day After Tomorrow<\/i>. In the more recent Blade Runner 2049<\/i> and Syfy Network series The Expanse<\/i><\/a>, massive seawalls try to protect a future Los Angeles and New York City from sea-level rise caused by climate change.<\/p>\n Whether politicians admit it or not, the scenes we witness in real life show we\u2019re now all living in a dystopian science fiction movie.<\/p>\n Incredibly, leading policy makers and pundits<\/a> continue to deny scientific reality. In 2020, after an earlier series of devastating wildfires, then president Donald Trump dismissed concerns<\/a> over climate change, telling one California official \u201cI don’t think science knows\u201d about global warming. \u201cIt’ll start getting cooler, you just watch.\u201d Five increasingly hot years later,<\/a> Trump is continuing to ignore the science during the Los Angeles disaster, preferring instead to point fingers at California water policy, diversity and inclusion efforts, endangered fish and his political opponents. His major campaign funder Elon Musk has also weighed in<\/a> with grossly unscientific opinions dismissing the role of climate change.<\/p>\n They\u2019re wrong, and it\u2019s our responsibility as scientists to say so. These fires were unambiguously influenced by human-caused climate change<\/a>. Global temperatures are accelerating upward; 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history<\/a>, and all 10 of the hottest years have been in the last decade, continuing a century-long trend of warming<\/a>. Extreme hydrologic events, including floods and droughts, are accelerating, and Southern California is intensely dry. Los Angeles has received essentially no rainfall in over 10 months, with the driest start to a rainy season<\/a> on record, parching soils and vegetation and setting the stage for extreme winds to intensify and spread the fires.<\/p>\n Refusal to acknowledge the role of climate change must stop. It hinders efforts to mitigate climate change by cutting damaging emissions. It contributes to failures to strengthen our ability to adapt to those impacts we can no longer avoid. And it massively worsens the human suffering caused by accelerating disasters<\/a>.<\/p>\n We know what\u2019s coming, but we also know what to do. In addition to aggressively accelerating the energy transition<\/a> away from fossil fuels, changing individual behavior<\/a> and reducing carbon emissions from other sources<\/a>, we have to expand efforts to build resilience to unavoidable impacts.<\/p>\n That means strategies such as improving resilience to wildfires<\/a> with better land management, and policy reforms, such as building with fire-resistant materials and designs<\/a>, reducing vegetation around homes and restricting development in high-risk areas. Communities must toughen water systems<\/a> by modernizing infrastructure, diversifying water supplies and strengthening fire-fighting. Coastal properties at risk<\/a> of sea-level rise and intensifying storms will have to be protected, moved or abandoned. New construction in risky areas must be halted, despite pressure from developers to build in these areas, and any reconstruction must be to higher, safer standards and designs.<\/p>\n It’s time to listen to the science, stop listening to the deniers and work to make our dystopian future, once again, fiction.<\/p>\n This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of <\/i>Scientific American.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Motorcyclist](\"https:\/\/static.scientificamerican.com\/dam\/m\/2b9971a8578e102b\/original\/cyclist-views-LA-fires.jpg?m=1737744955.368&w=600\")
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