It's Not Just the Weather
Friederike Otto on her new book, Climate Injustice. Plus gas station warnings, red state storms, and nuclear energy.
Dear friends,
Dr. Friederike Otto studies climate disasters for a living, yet her new book Climate Injustice isn’t just about the climate.
Otto studies heat waves, floods, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events in her role as the co-lead of World Weather Attribution at Imperial College London. She and her team look closely at whether—and to what extent—human-caused climate change has impacted the frequency, intensity, and duration of various disasters. They can’t always establish a direct link, and yet even without a clear tie to warming temperatures, the events themselves can be devastating—a fact that motivated Otto to write about the way climate change is deeply interwoven with inequity and the long shadow of colonialism.
“The main thing I have learned from extreme weather events is that the climate crisis is shaped largely by inequality and the still-undisputed dominance of patriarchal and colonial structures, which also prevent the serious pursuit of climate protection,” she writes, adding that it’s only by addressing the former that we may begin to truly address climate change. As I finished Climate Injustice, I was left with the sense that everyone I know would benefit from reading it.
I spoke with Otto about her second book, heat waves, the importance of empowering women to respond to climate change, and the way early warning systems can save lives.
Can you start by talking about the attribution studies you conduct? What exactly does that work look like and why do you do it?
The main idea is really straightforward. What we are aiming to do in every attribution study is find out what weather is possible in the world we live in today (which has now been warmed by 1.3 degrees due to the burning of fossil fuels) and compare it to what weather would be possible if we hadn't done that. We use real world events as they are happening so that we are able to connect the weather that people experience around the world with the relatively abstract signs of climate change, so that we can all better understand what climate change does. For instance I just had a call with colleagues in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there was very heavy flooding last week. We are doing a study to determine the role of climate change there, so we had a conversation about what data we can use, and which weather stations we can [access]. And once we find that out, we write code to help us analyze the data.
It sounds like you analyze the data very quickly. You often have at least some kind of response for the media before the event is over.
Yes. While we use methods that we have also used in more traditional scientific peer-reviewed studies, that takes quite a long time to do. The aim of my initiative is to do this fast, so to bring scientific evidence into the conversation that is happening in the media, but also within NGOs, and within governments, while the event is still unfolding.
In 2022, you wrote an essay with colleagues and the journal’s editors named "Stop Blaming the Climate for Disasters.” People accused you of down-playing climate change. What did you hope to convey with that piece and what can we learn from that misunderstanding?
As we’ve gotten better at identifying the role that climate change plays in extreme weather, we’ve found that people basically just replace “God” with “climate change.” Particularly local governments. They say "Oh, this event that has happened was climate change, and so it was beyond our control.” And if you're in the Global South, it's mainly the countries in the Global North that are causing the problem. But [the governments] that are participating in the narrative that says, "you need fossil fuels for development," are also part of the problem. Often when I say that, people respond by saying, "We are already so busy with trying to solve all sorts of problems, we can't worry about [climate adaptation] as well." But what I really hope this book can show is that by addressing inequality and vulnerability you also address climate change. It is not that something extra needs to be done, but actually, if we were to seriously address some of the problems we have today—for instance the cost of living has gone up so much for poor people through inflation, high food prices, high energy prices—the best way to do that would not involve burning fossil fuels. If we would invest in insulating homes, creating walkable cities, having alternative food sources instead of monocultures and so on … that would also address climate change.
I really appreciated how you threaded the needle in so many parts of the book. I also liked that you described The Paris Agreement as “a human rights treaty.”
It's nice that you highlight that, because when I say that to my students, they are always very surprised—and their shock was one of the main motivations to write this book, because people shouldn't be surprised. That should be a no-brainer that everyone understands.
You write “it’s now clear that climate change alters heat waves far more than other weather phenomena.” Can you speak to the importance of better understanding heat waves around the world and the challenges in collecting data about heat?
Heat is the one type of extreme weather that is most influenced by climate change. We just did a study with my team in Central Asia—Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan—and we found that the heat wave that occurred there at the end of March would have been 10 degrees cooler if it wasn't for climate change. That's a huge change; it makes a huge, huge difference if you have a heat wave of 35°C (95°F) or 25°C (77°F) degrees.
Climate change completely changes the nature of heat waves—how hot they are and how many we have. And people still really underestimate heat waves. In many parts of the world, weather forecasts don’t even mention heat waves. In many places there are no warnings and heat waves are not registered or reported, and there is still not a single academic paper that really looks at all the impacts of extreme heat. We have papers that look at the impact on labor productivity. Then we have other papers that look at the impacts on agriculture in different regions in the world, and still more that look at health impacts, and at the impacts on infrastructure. But we don't have any that bring it all together for a single heat wave. And that makes it hard to put adequate warnings out for heat but also to really assess how much it costs.
You write quite a bit about the lack of comparable climate data in the Global South. Why is that?
The biggest reason is the lack of capacity. In many countries around the world, the Met offices are only charged with weather forecasts, and they may only have a handful of employees for a whole country. And that means they have to rely on international forecasting models to maintain weather stations.
There are automatic weather stations [in many parts of the Global South], but you still need people to occasionally check on them. There have been campaigns and projects in parts of Africa to implement automatic weather stations, and then an elephant steps on one, and if then there's no one who has the capacity or the time to go and fix it, then that station is gone. So we know that automatic systems don't just automatically work forever by themselves.
It’s common for international aid projects to build stations without developing plans for how to collect and look after the data. In that case, the data will often just disappear. So capacity is really the biggest issue. But apart from that there’s a lack of awareness, because in many parts of the world heat waves have not been seen as dangerous, especially when compared to droughts and floods.
You contrasted what happened in 2003 when France was hit with an extreme, early heat wave that killed 1,500 people and what happened when a large flood hit the Ahr/Erft region of Germany in 2021 and killed 184 people. What role can early warnings play and why are they so important? They seem to be one of the simpler solutions in the book.
We've just started our 100th study, and it's always the case that when there is early warning—and not just that there’s a weather forecast, but it’s communicated to the most vulnerable people—then the death toll is low. We see that across the world, and it's actually one of the more cost-effective ways to save lives. The flood in Germany was forecast by meteorological services, but it was not well-communicated to the people in the affected region. Most people didn't know a rain storm could be deadly. And even those who had heard that the floods might be dangerous didn't know what to do, because they hadn’t been shown the best evacuation routes.
In places like Florida, where there are lots of hurricanes, and people know the evacuation rules [most people survive]. And yet in the case of Hurricane Helene, which hit southern Appalachia, the death toll was much higher because people were not prepared, and didn't know what to do with the warnings.
Since the 2003 heat wave, France has invested in a system of heat alerts so that when a heat wave is forecast, it's not only televised, but then in local communities designated people are warning those who don't have much access to information. There are heat action plans in every village and that makes a difference between life and death.
In India, where in some cities that had very high death tolls after heat waves in the early 2010s, they have also implemented heat action plans. And that just means there’s a person responsible for warning people and reminding them to look after the elderly. And if there are no water fountains, they make sure that lorries with fresh water come into town, and public buildings like museums, libraries and so on are open so people have cool places to go to. These measures don't cost a lot of money. They require some organization, but once you have a network established, it's a very easy way to save lives.
You write about the way gender politics impact climate disasters, particularly in the Global South. You write, “If we want to lessen climate change’s power over women, we have to ensure more power for women.” Can you say more about that?
Usually when women in the community are better educated and know about the dangers [inherent in climate disasters], then the children will know and therefore the whole community will know what to do and how to keep safe. But no matter where you are in the world, if you just educate the men [they’re less likely to share the information]—that is what the statistics very clearly show.
Research also shows that if you only give recovery support to the head of the household, and that's often the man, then that money usually benefits neither the whole household nor the community. Whereas if you give women access to rebuilding funds, they will use them to make the community more resilient in new and creative ways. When women are involved in decision-making, they're much more aware of what’s not working. So, if they have access to money and are included in decision making, they will base their decisions on a much broader set of information and knowledge. And it's very clear from a scientific view that the more diverse knowledge sources you have, the better decisions you make.
You point out that women are hardly ever the focus of studies on the impacts of climate change.
And they're also hardly ever the focus of solutions. Because there is still this idea that the best solutions are technical inventions.
You describe the lifestyle changes we are being asked to make here in the Global North as "laughably small" given how much our actions have already caused the climate to warm. Why do you think so many are struggling to make those changes?
The biggest problem is that we are being persuaded and increasingly successfully, at least in the US and Europe, that changing anything away from the status quo will cause the end of Western Civilization! The most important thing we have to do now is to counter that narrative. All the stories we tell, and not just the ones that are explicitly about climate change or about inequality, but just generally, all our popular movies and books ultimately uphold the status quo. We don't have enough good stories that portray the world we want to live in. I mean, if you're an artist or writer, great, you can go [create those counter-narratives] yourself. But even if you're not, I think you can just talk to your friends about how you want the world to look. The other big problem is cynicism. We are now at a point where there are so many lies, and lying is almost the default thing, and the taller the lie you tell, the more electable you are, so for many it has started to feel like it doesn't really matter what you do. And that cynicism is dangerous. So, we need to counter that and say, “No, it does matter what you do. It does matter that you teach your children that there is truth, and science is real.” That’s not about our carbon footprints, in a measurable way, but I think it’s our most important job right now.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Climate news you might have missed
Gas station warning labels
Where does your mind go when you’re filling your car up with gas? Do you notice the other people and their cars, take a few minutes to catch your breath, or run through your mental to-do list? A proposed bill in Colorado that would require warning labels on gas pumps just might inspire drivers to spend a little of that time contemplating the link between the gas they’re pumping and the climate. The bill would require all gas station owners to post signs that read, "Combustion of this product releases greenhouse gases known by the state of Colorado to be linked to global heating and significant health impacts" or face hefty fines.
Similar ordinances are already in place in Sweden and Cambridge, Massachusetts and another failed to pass in Berkeley, CA in 2014. In all those places, the fossil fuel industry lobbyists have pushed hard against the labeling. Early research on the impacts of the Cambridge ordinance suggests that gas labels work as a “social marketing scheme that may correct for pluralistic ignorance,” or in other words a solution to the fact that while most Americans are deeply concerned about climate change (a new Gallup poll found that 48% now call it “a serious threat”) they don’t tend to believe that other people are.
As Gregg Sparkman, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College, told Capital and Main, “these signs chip away at the mirage—they become one of hopefully many signals that an increasing number of Americans regard this as an emergency that requires urgent action out of government, citizens and everybody.”
In Colorado, as the fossil fuel industry works to cast doubt framed as concern for the financial health of small businesses, Governor Jared Polis has expressed skepticism about the labels. But given the turning of the tide around Big Oil’s role in the crisis—and the renewed push to hold them accountable for the costs of climate-fueled disasters in a number of states—I won’t be at all surprised if warning labels appear at gas stations near me sometime soon.
The climate disasters hitting red states
Research shows that residents of red states tend to be disproportionately vulnerable, in part because the leaders in those states have done less planning and directed less funding toward infrastructure and critical adaptation measures.
As the Trump administration works to defund and dismantle FEMA, and radically scale back our nation’s system for tracking, modeling, and analyzing weather and the climate, this scenario is proving to be a tragic one.
In one example, Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders’ pleas for federal assistance were refused several times by the administration despite the fact that the state has been hit by an absolutely brutal series of tornadoes and other storms over the last four weeks (including one on Easter Sunday). In the town of Monette, Arkansas, for instance, some residents were still recovering from a tornado that hit in 2021, when they suffered an incredibly damaging direct hit earlier this month.
Trump’s FEMA also denied individual and public assistance to seven West Virginia coalfield counties following the deadly flooding that took place there in February. And it is slow-walking recovery funds to the parts of Virginia struggling to recover from Hurricane Helene.
In all these cases, delays in repairs and disaster aid could leave already vulnerable areas at even greater risk of losing their homes, businesses and even their lives when the next round of storms moves through. And while some people in blue states are still clinging to Schadenfreude along the lines of “they voted for it, they need to deal with the consequences,” I worry that that type of response is both distracting and damaging. What we need now are not Kumbaya moments but a broader reckoning with the truth: The climate has already changed and it is our shared vulnerability and humanity that should form the basis of a true and lasting response.
The question of nuclear energy
I admit that I have struggled to reconcile what appears to be an increasingly common stance that nuclear energy is a safe, workable solution to the climate crisis with my (admittedly basic) understanding of the dangers of nuclear reactors and their waste problem. So I was heartened to read Elizabeth Kolbert’s thoughtful and detailed New Yorker piece on the topic. In it Kolbert responds to the latest pro-nuclear books and chronicles the broader moment—in which many nations have backed away from the phaseout goals they put in place after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011; the state of California has reversed course on closing Diablo Canyon, its only working nuclear power plant; and advocates of the technology are pushing for the development of small modular reactors or SMRs across the U.S. and Europe. But she also shares her own brief history as a participant in anti-nuclear energy activism and does a kind of gut check-fact check. Kolbert details the ongoing, “world-class disaster” in Fukushima, where “cleaning up the site could take a century, if it happens at all” and concludes that: Nuclear power—and this includes burying or reprocessing the resulting waste—has always been safe on paper. The trouble is that we don’t live on paper. We live in a world where earthquake faults are belatedly discovered, contractors cut corners, utilities mislead regulators, and people panic—a world, in short, of errors, terrors, and corruption. As the world warms, global instability will only increase. In this sense, climate change represents a pretty good argument against going nuclear.
On the brighter side
It has been 100 days since the LA fires began and the bike path along the beach in the Pacific Palisades has reopened.
The new electric CalTrain in the Bay Area is helping make the case for more investment in electric trains in the state. A recent study of the air quality around the stations found, “the same drop in black carbon concentrations in the station as California cities achieved from 30 years of clean air regulations.”
The large wildlife crossing currently being built across the 101 freeway in Agoura Hills, CA hit a major milestone earlier this month. After three years of construction, the 12-acre bridge was covered with a special soil mix designed to cultivate a variety of native shrubs, perennials, grasses, and trees to make it blend as much as possible with the surrounding hills.
$4.1 million in federal funds will go toward helping the Hopi Nation build a solar microgrid that will power two wells that—along with a pipeline—could provide regular access to drinking water for a remote community that has for years gone without. The funds were frozen in February but unfrozen last month, and (knock on wood) appear to be accessible by the community.
Finland closed its last fully coal-fired power plant in late March. The Scandinavian nation has ramped up its renewable energy production in recent years and will still burn some coal in emergency scenarios, but says it plans to phase out all remaining coal burning by 2040.
Britain is investing in restoring its ancient hedge system, in part to bring back the diversity of insects and critters they host. The Guardian describes the nation’s system of hedges as “by far, the country’s biggest nature reserve.”
Take care out there,
Twilight
This makes intuitive sense but I’m grateful to see it outlined here, and look forward to checking out the book. I’ve been confused about the narratives around nuclear energy, so that’s helpful, too!