Real Climate Risks: Impact of Response Measures
Climate Change will have adverse impacts. But they may pale in comparison to the impact of "Response Measures".
Much like unexpected side effects of medicines on the human body, policy will have unexpected side-effects on the economy, and the environment. Unless it is properly formulated.
The wider the mitigation measure, the greater the risk of adverse impacts.
Those adverse impacts are defined as negative changes to the biophysical, social, economic, and cultural environments.
If the world is serious about transitioning "to a low-carbon or climate neutral society", they have to first properly address the impacts of those response measures.
Those changes will be felt in three manners (1) directly, (3) indirectly, and (3) deferred and often unforeseen.
Direct Impacts, which are those that can be directly linked to the specific Response Measure. They generally occur within the same timeframe as the Response Measure is implemented.
The Dutch farmers are waking up the world to how bad the impact will be from rushed response measure; Nitrous Oxydes make up less than a tenth of even the largest economy, to say nothing of Holland or Canada.
Regardless of any ulterior motive, 2023-2024 was gonna be lit...
Indirect Impacts are of two types, caused by:
The Response Measure itself, but are later in time or farther removed in distance, but are still reasonably foreseeable. For an example, take a look at Sri-Lanka, and consider it's PM's now-scrubbed promise...Yet, far from being on path to prosperity in 2025, it is set on the path to economic depression and even famine by 2023;
Foreseeable indirect effects of the Response Measure itself, or reactions to its implementation. An example is the looming gas shortage in Europe, mostly due to its "green" policies, which Germany phased in a utopian Energiewende before phasing out the "old".
“How far away was a day ago, when promises were cheap and consequences were still far ahead.”
Deferred Impacts are of two types:
Cumulative impacts, caused by the combination of past, present and “reasonably foreseeable” future actions. In legal terms, at least. In reality, nothing is really reasonably foreseeable; those are often only foreseen after the fact.
Unforeseeable Impacts, as the unexpected consequences of Response Measures pile up. Compared to other policy domains, Climate Change policy is more exposed to such impacts, not least because climatic change remains a "wicked problem" that is hard to pin down with any workable certainty.
For those reasons, the Social and economic consequences of those Response Measures were considered significant enough that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) set up a specific committee to "support the work of the forum on the impact of the implementation of response measures". the Katowice Committee of Experts on the Impacts of the Implementation of the Response Measures (KCI) has been carrying out regular meetings since June 2019.
However...
Fundamentally, the adverse impact of Response Measures is systemic, and often deferred and unforeseen.
Indeed, in Climate policy, while the knowledge remains “formative", actions are undertaken before a complete solution is found for the problem at hand. This may cause a accumulation of impacts due to "induced" actions that may occur as part of society's reaction to the effects of the RM. They are much harder to foresee, and are often unaccounted for, even if their consequences are very real.
In Medicine as in the Economy; when the easiest Response measures is to get rid of the patient