Climate action can’t be unidimensional

In recent years, international climate summits have only advanced moderate goals in fighting the climate crisis as nations appear deadlocked on intractable issues such as climate finance and loss-and-damage estimations.

Freezing weather sweeping across the north-eastern coast of the United States from the “blizzard of the century” has left nearly 50 people dead across nine states, sparked massive power outages and upended the holiday season this week. The fierce snow squalls, howling winds and sub-zero temperatures have walloped New York and Buffalo, and, once again, underlined the unpredictable shifts in weather patterns wrought by the climate crisis and the urgent need for adaptation measures to protect vulnerable populations.

A man tries to dig his truck out of deep snow on December 26, 2022 (Getty Images via AFP)

Scientific research has repeatedly drawn the link between increasingly erratic weather patterns and a warming planet. Unimaginable scenes of people dying inside cars on roads in some of the most developed and richest parts of the world should drive home the message that climate mitigation and adaptation measures are urgent and cannot wait for the slow political decision-making processes that have, so far, failed to keep pace with the rapidly rising global emissions.

In recent years, international climate summits have only advanced moderate goals in fighting the climate crisis as nations appear deadlocked on intractable issues such as climate finance and loss and damage estimations. But there is also an urgent, and simultaneous, need to safeguard vulnerable populations. This needs to span infrastructure resilience, food security and temporary measures that can withstand the harshest impacts of climate shocks. Only a multidimensional approach will help.