01-01 Why Quirky

Polar bears are climate losers and grey whales are climate winners. A little quirky?
Polar bears are animals that hunts seals on the Arctic ocean ice sheets. But those ice sheets are melting and the polar bear in many areas will simply disappear.
Grey whales eat krill, which are baby shrimp, but they will also eat all kinds of fish. And more importantly, they will follow fish as fish respond to changes in ocean water temperatures. Whales as a specie live in both cold water where they feed, and warm water where they breed.
Part of this story is adaptability. Some nations will adapt better than others. The other part of this story is that what might kill polar bears, will provide opportunities for others. Like a billion dollars of mineral exploration in the Arctic. Now that is quirky.
The approach of the world’s political leaders is to get everyone working on ways to cut the emissions of carbon dioxide so we can keep global temperatures from rising. Not quirky enough.
Here’s my take. In trying to come up the learning curve on climate science, my first discovery was that it is a body of science that is enormously complex. This means it can be exploited politically. Political parties pretending to fight climate change can still front for the fossil fuel industry.
Another bit of reality. Something like 40% of the world’s carbon emissions come from China and the US. And the US has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement to help keep global temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Centigrade. So how do we get China and the US to be leaders on climate change? What kind of stories will their citizens respond to?
A suggestion. Focus on stories of people moving from say Phoenix to Toronto, or from Melbourne to Auckland, or from Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires. Climate change is about real estate values.
Someone, for example, with an ocean front condo in Miami can not do anything about the fires in Australia, but they understand what it means if they can no longer get insurance.
Focus on stories in China where coal is being replaced by solar and wind because people cannot breathe. Being cheaper does not have the needed emotion to be political. And amazing stories of Chinese cars and buses with solar panels on their rooves. World opinion is important to China.
Focus on desalination that can turn deserts into farmlands. They have done that in Israel and their technology has a global market. A plant using Israeli technology has been built in San Diego.
Focus on solar being cheaper than oil even in the Middle East. The reality is that capital flows into renewables are globally transformational, but that is not a sexy or quirky story.
Focus on electric vehicles not just because of climate change but because they are better technology.
The problem dealing with something like climate change is that it is so uncertain. It is quirky. There are obvious losers, but so many of the big stories are about the hidden winners and the hidden surprises. Smart people, however, will see enough to act.
Here is a family story that makes my point. A Jewish uncle’s family left Germany in 1933 when Hitler came to power. The brothers speaking German all served in US Army intelligence during WW2. Tragically, other family members who stayed were all murdered by the Nazis. Why is it some people can make judgements about the future and then act on them?
So, with climate change, we will have leaders and followers; winners and losers. If we focus on the winners, the future will not look so scary. But it will still be a little quirky.