It’s a gray Saturday and I can smell snow in the air.  People across North Carolina are preparing for the state’s inaugural round of winter weather.  The roads are salted.  My classmates in Durham are wrapping up their exams and contemplating the impact of the winter weather on their testing schedules.  My own family has been feeding logs into a healthy fire for several days.

I had the pleasure to grow up in North Carolina in the greater Charlotte area.  Despite the state’s generally-mild and sunny climate, 2002 was different; that winter brought a debilitating storm front to the NC piedmont that dumped more than an inch of freezing rain.  My family was without power for more than a week.

Flash forward 15 years, and although the North Carolina weather continues to bring a happy medium of soothing heat and refreshing cold, the abnormal weather like that from 2002 seems to be growing more common. This past winter, Duke students grappled with more than a foot of snow that fell in only 48 hours.  I’ve lived in the Triangle for nearly a decade and have never seen that much snow blanket the area.  Even as a child, it was a hard winter if the Charlotte area received more than a couple winter storms a season, each dropping no more than 3 inches.

Now I promise I’m not going to use colloquial examples to preach to you about the weather.  However, I think weather events are the most relatable way people experience broader climate events.  This past year, coastal communities in the Carolinas and in Florida watched as their homes and businesses were leveled by Hurricanes Michael and Florence.

Damaged homes are seen along the water’s edge in the aftermath of hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., Friday, Oct. 12, 2018. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

California authorities are still working to locate missing individuals from the Camp Fire—the most devastating wild fire in the state’s history.  A subtropical cyclone formed in May off Chile’s coast, a region whose ocean temperatures have historically been much too cold to support this type of weather event.  A particularly heavy monsoon season devastated Bangladesh, a country already grappling with a dire and complicated refugee crisis.[i]

Global temperatures continue to rise, all-the-while nations like the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia become increasingly reluctant to commit resources toward mitigating greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).  Unfortunately, increased global temperatures will only make these severe weather events more common.  Furthermore, development decisions that haven’t taken into account the vulnerability of certain areas to climate change will magnify the damage costs associated with these severe weather events.

Here in the US, we are blessed with space to which impacted communities can retreat.  The same isn’t true for many small island developing nations that are losing their territory to climate change by no fault of their own.  Therein, the climate change negotiations have dedicated more and more efforts to promoting conversations about adaptation initiatives as well as finance for this adaptation.  That being said, it’s hard enough to convince wealthy, developed countries who have contributed a substantial chunk of GHGs to date that they should help finance GHG mitigation in less-developed nations; it’s all-but-impossible to convince these same nations that they should also help these less developed countries fund initiatives to adapt to the impacts of climate change. That being said, COP24 in Katowice, Poland is centrally intended to operationalize the Paris Agreement by incorporating more quantitative benchmarks into the text of the negotiation document.[ii]  This includes climate finance benchmarks.  I am excited to track how these conversations proceed, but am skeptical that there will be great progress in Poland to this end.

Well, it’s time to close the computer and board the plane bound for Poland.  We are set to sneak out just ahead of this winter weather, escaping one surprisingly chilly area for another predictably cold region.

[i]https://unfccc.int/news/extreme-weather-continues-in-2018-a-continuing-call-to-climate-action

[ii]Antonich, B., Ph.D. (2018, November 13). Policy Brief: EU Council Adopts Conclusions on Climate Finance Ahead of UNFCCC COP 24. Retrieved from http://sdg.iisd.org/commentary/policy-briefs/eu-council-adopts-conclusions-on-climate-finance-ahead-of-unfccc-cop-24/