As the World Burns: Climate Change's Dangerous Next Phase Written by Michael Oppenheimer In late August [2020], more than 600 separate wildfires ravaged California, killing seven people. Meanwhile, two tropical cyclones struck the Gulf Coast only days apart: first Tropical Storm Marco and then Hurricane Laura, the latter of which killed 26 people in the United States and tied the record for the strongest storm to hit Louisiana. Extreme events such as these signal a worrying trend. In the coming decades, as temperatures continue to climb, seemingly isolated climate disasters will begin to cverlap, their impacts becoming more than additive. Scientists expect to see more intense tropical cyclones and more heat waves. Each disaster could compound the damage of the next, with less and less time for people to recover in between. Viewing weather events as independent cccurrences is like trying to understand a movie by looking at a series of brief clips; they are important plot points, but not the whele story. In fact, viewing climate change as the accumulation of individual events underestimates the threat, because such events do not take place in a vacuum. As recent research shows, features of the climate interact with one another --interactions that exacerbate the impact on people and ecosystems. In the United States and other wealthy countries, efforts to adapt to global warming have always played second fiddle to efforts to reduce carbon emissions. This emphasis is understandable, since if greenhouse gas emissions are not restrained, successfully adapting to climate change will be impossible for most of humanity: countries will suffer major damage, and lives will be lost... But policymakers no longer have the luxury of downgrading adaptation because climate change's devastating effects are no longer in the future; they are QCCUIring now. A CONFLUENCE OF CRISES A CONFLUENCE OF CRISES Soon, some once-in-a-lifetime catastrophes will become annual debacles. As temperatures rise, the odds that such events will occur at any specific location in a given year are growing quickly, particularly in coastal areas. By 2050, many...areas around the world will face flood levels every year that only recently occurred once per century. When extreme events strike the same location more frequently, the confluence can be more devastating than the sum of its parts. Consider a string of extremely hot days in one particular placethe odds of which, computer climate models confirm, are growing rapidly. A few consecutive days of unusually hot weather is manageable, but a week or two, far less so. As a heat wave goes on, the electrical grid struggles to supply enough power for all the air conditioning being used. Blackouts are triggerad. With no air conditioning, the human body's own system for mitigating heat breaks down, too. Some die of heat stroke and respiratory disease. For thase who lack air conditioning (which is a majority of the world's population), many of whom live in aging, urban apartments that are slow to cool naturally, the risk is greatest. As hot days bunch together, such households will see long stretches without relief, since the indoor temperature lags a day or two behind the outdoor temperature. Even extreme events scattered across the world can compound one another. Consider crop failures. About 15 percent of the world's grain is consumed not in the country where it was grown but after being exported. The biggest exporters of grain--Argentina, Australia, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States--are spread cut around the world. That is a gocd thing from the perspective of food security, because it minimizes the chances of simultansous crop failures. But global warming is increasing those odds. Yields of corn, soybeans, and other key crops fall sharply as temperatures rise and the amount of water they receive falls. As a result, there is now a growing possibility of simultaneous crop failures in two far-apart breadbaskets--something that could disrupt the global food supply and lead to malnutrition and, in some places, widespread starvation. THE ADAPTATION IMPERATIVE Nearly all accounts of the climate problem from scientists and other experts end with a plea for rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But governments should emphasize adaptation equally. That means developing forward-looking policies to protect people, infrastructure, ecosystems, and society. It means restructuring or replacing perverse incentives that encourage pecple and industries to settle in exposed areas. It means giving more resources to international agencies to help the least developed countries. Most of all, it means thinking many years ahead to gather extensive rescurces and political will for often unpopular policies. Very little of this job can be done quickly. Adaptation should have begun in earnest decades ago. Source Citation: THE ADAPTATION IMPERATIVE Nearly all accounts of the climate problem from scientists and other experts end with a plea for rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But governments should emphasize adaptation equally. That means developing forward-looking policies to protect people, infrastructure, ecosystems, and society. It means restructuring or replacing perverse incentives that encourage pecple and industries to settle in exposad areas. It means giving more resources to international agencies to help the least developed countries. Most of all, it means thinking many years ahead to gather extensive resources and political will for often unpopular policies. Very little of this job can be done quickly. Adaptation should have begun in earnest decades ago. Source Citation: Oppenheimer, Michael. "As the World Burns: Climate Change's Dangerous Next Phase.\" Foreign Affairs, vol. 99, no. 6, Now.-Dec. 2020, p. 34+. Gale In Context: Oppasing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/AB39268768/0VICTu=saintpaul_edu&sid=bookmark- OVIC&xid=348e6124. Accessed 16 June 2021, # Question 8: (10.0 paints) Write a one-paragraph summary of Article 2. Your summary should