“Crank up the cooling.” (WSJ, below)
It is adaptation time. Mitigation has failed, and no policy change, however radical, can affect global or regional climate for decades, if ever. As stated in a recent article in the New York Times:
Climate change means that the issue is most likely here to stay. Across Europe, “we think the summers are hot now,” said Joan Ballester Claramunt, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health who focuses on climate change and health. “The future that we’re seeing, it could be much worse.”
So why didn’t the alarmist community push for A/C and other appliances to cool the air during the summer peak? They warned about ‘hothouse Earth’ but did nothing about it.
Did climate mitigation policy work against adaptation directly and indirectly? Yes and yes. That is a major problem. In the name of social justice, climate campaigners are invited to replace wasteful, losing climate mitigation policies with here-and-now adaptation for the summer peak. For basic human needs. And now.
Alex Epstein has identified “climate mastery” as a feature of the modern energy sector (dense energies, only two centuries old). The EU/UK can do today what was done by, for example, Houstonians a century ago: adapt and thrive.
A Wall Street Journal editorial, “The Economic Case for European AC,” was noteworthy.
[Europe’s] green disavowal of air conditioning comes at an economic cost. As the mercury rises, business productivity suffers along with the workforce.
Europe was a set-up for heat waves:
Many European offices and apartment buildings were designed to retain heat, and air-conditioning penetration averages 19%, compared with some 90% in the U.S., according to a report this year by Allianz Research, an arm of the insurance company. One result: Even “indoor workers are not insulated” from the misery.
Policy implications?
Europe will face economic costs related to warming“even if ambitious climate mitigation goals are met,” says a report last year from Assessing Climate Change Risk in Europe, a European Union-funded research effort. But the continent can reduce the harm by better adapting. That study found broader AC adoption could have annual economic benefits of €40 to €60 billion ($46 billion to $69 billion) by 2050. An“important co-benefit” would be fewer heat-related fatalities. Crank up the cooling.