We’ve hinted at this in our damnation posts on natural disasters, water, and food shortages but this source environmental damnation is one that has repercussions across the damnation categories. While we won’t discuss all of the ripple effects of the shockwaves it is producing, we’ll discuss some of the biggest ones from the primary effects.
Hotter Summers
Everyone associates climate change with global warming, and the summers are definitely warming up, as this is one aspect of climate change. As a result of hotter average summertime temperatures, we are experiencing a global change in weather patterns that is bringing more droughts and wildfires, which is resulting in an increase in lost crops at a time when food reserves are hovering near the all time lows that arrived in 2011 (and at a time when the US no longer has any strategic grain reserves). This means that spiking commodity prices are going to keep spiking, assuming that you can even get enough of the commodity. If your organization is not your supplier’s preferred customer, and 30% of the global crop gets wiped out, is your order getting filled?
Colder Winters
Global warming is not just global warming, it’s global climate change year round. While the summers get hotter, the winters get colder and more severe and bring more severe storms with record setting snowfalls that can bury your average personal automobile, massive ice storms (that can bring down entire power grids), and fast moving ice, even in the US. (Source: Raw Video) As a result transportation routes are shutting down, which doesn’t matter because your factories cannot run without power, and your people can not get to work in temperatures that can inflict frostbite in less than sixty seconds.
More Regulations
Climate change is a result of global warming and global warming is at least partially a result of our industrialization and all of the carbon and particulates that we pump into the atmosphere that would not get there naturally. The smarter countries realize this, and are creating regulations to prevent (over) pollution that is damaging our planet and threatening our very existence. And while this is a good thing in theory, the fact that these regulations are not only popping up faster than Fibonacci’s rabbits but that every clean air, water, etc. regulation around the globe has not only different restrictions on pollutant output, but on quality control and reporting, it’s a paperwork nightmare. When one considers all the trees that are being cut down to support the creation of these regulations, one has to wonder if more harm is being done than good sometimes.
In short, climate change is another eternal damnation that plays havoc in the direct manners specified above, and in more indirect manners when one considers the impact it has on transportation infrastructure (as extreme cold and rapid freezing and thawing is very hard on our man made structures), our providers (who are forced to claim force majeure on a more regular basis), and us (when we just cannot handle extreme weather conditions we never evolved for).