We should do all this because, Ruth says, “even just over the next 20 years . . . during the summer months, we’ll probably have a shortfall from about 20 to 30 percent in energy supply in the region to meet air-conditioning needs.” Renewable and/or decentralized energy production offer one way to deal with soaring summertime demand.
Health: deadly heat
One of the models for severe coastal flooding after the year 2100 envisions Massachusetts General Hospital submerged in water following a sizable storm. That’s a problem. Let’s assume, then, that by that time, the biggest hospital in New England has found a new address on higher, dryer ground. That still doesn’t change the fact that a hotter city leads to more health problems.
The CLIMB study found that by 2100, we could be looking at more than 30 days a year in which temperatures exceed 90 degrees — more than twice as many such days as there are now. That means more heat stroke, more cardiovascular distress, and a much higher heat-mortality risk.
“I do think we’re going to see a lot of heat-related deaths,” says Ross Gelbspan. “If you recall, [in 2003] there were something like 35,000 people who died in Europe in a heat wave.” Elderly shut-ins in France and Germany were baked alive in their apartments. Just imagine scenes like that happening in Roxbury and Brookline.
Insects: our new pets
“All the relevant scientists agree that as the temp goes up, we’re going to see a big increase in the insect population,” says Gelbspan. “That means a lot more ticks on Cape Cod. It means a lot more mosquitoes on windless days. So you could see a big increase in tick-borne Lyme disease and also mosquito-borne diseases.” As warmer temperatures allow certain insects to move to higher latitudes, the incidence and prevalence of vector-borne illnesses such as malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, and encephalitis could increase.
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However, we should be less concerned with what bugs can do to us than with what they can do to our food supply. “The main battle isn’t between insects and [animal] life forms; it’s between plants and insects,” says Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.
Gelbspan shares these and other concerns about a major breakdown in our food-supply system. “We’re seeing big changes: the soil is drying out too quickly; the timing of the seasons is changing, and therefore the crops are beginning to bloom out of whack. Those things are already beginning to happen.” What’s more, he says, “we’re getting much more of our rain in these intense, severe downpours, which is not good for agriculture. It washes away topsoil and doesn’t penetrate down.”
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A lake where Copley Square used to be?
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Water supply: plenty of it, if . . .
“Water scarcity I don’t think is going to be a big issue in this part of the country,” says Gelbspan. Paul Kirshen agrees, to a point. “Most of Massachusetts gets its water from the MWRA [Massachusetts Water Resources Authority], from the Quabbin and Wachusett reservoirs,” Kirshen says. “The demand on that system right now is far less than the amount that system can deliver.” Even under the constraints of climate change, he says, as long as more towns don’t join the MWRA, there will be enough water. But recently, the authority has been thinking about inviting more cities and towns to join the four dozen it already serves. A move like that, he says, could lead to shortages in the future.
Sewage: the smell of the future
Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, and Somerville all have old “combined” sewers, which carry rainwater and wastewater in the same pipes. Under normal conditions, that’s no problem. But, says Kirshen, during heavy storms of the sort we can expect more of in the future, “the runoff from the streets goes into this system that carries sanitary waste and rainwater. When you get a ton of rain, those systems overflow.”
Eutrophication — when water bodies receive excess nutrients from sewage runoff, which stimulates excessive plant growth (algae and aquatic weeds) and reduces dissolved oxygen in the water — is a particular problem. The CLIMB study looks at the Assabet River, flowing between Westborough and Concord, which is currently listed by the Department of Environmental Protection as unsuitable for “fish [and] other aquatic life.”
So how do we stop it?
“We need to cut our use of carbon fuel by about 70 to 80 percent worldwide,” says Gelbspan. “If we were to rewire the world with clean energy, that is clearly our best bet.”
But even if we can avoid the most awful scenarios, some warming is inevitable. We’ve got to face facts. “Because the present amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is going to be there for tens of decades, if not longer, we’ve got to start thinking about adapting to climate change,” says Kirshen. “So we’ve got to figure out how we live with it. And it’s a lot cheaper to do it now than to wait.”