A village woman gives water to Sunil Kumar Naik, an ambulance driver, to quench his thirst during a heat wave, on the way to a hospital, near a village in Banpur in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Saturday, June 17, 2023. The last 12 months were the hottest Earth has ever recorded, according to a new report Thursday, Nov. 9, by Climate Central, a nonprofit science research group.
Adapt/Move/Die used to have another name: Evolution. But evolution was played without a time clock over centuries or millennia. Adapt/Move/Die is customized for our fast-paced world. Every round is a lightning round, and there are no time-outs. But now, every forest is full of dying trees. A report from the Forest Service estimated that over 36 million, yes, million, trees died in 2022 just in California.
Here, we hope, coastal cities can be protected behind seawalls and levees. Infrastructure can be strengthened or moved or repaired. Some emergency assistance will be available for victims of “natural” disasters. “Move” will, in fact, be the most disruptive play in the game. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that between 2008 and 2016, an average of 21.5 million people per year were displaced by climate-related events like floods, storms and wildfires.