A first hand account of the effect of global warming
Extreme drought in The Netherlands, heat waves in other parts of the world and deadly rainfall in Seoul. This week I experienced the horrifying results of man-made global warming first hand, during the biggest rainfall recorded in over a century in Seoul, killing 9 people.
Monday August 8 was not a day like any other, as we just moved to a flashy new office in Gangnam. Except for that, I followed a typical routine at work, went home around 19 and cooked some food. After replying somewhat laconically to messages from friends asking me if I was alright because of the rain, I ate my homemade bibimbap and tried to relax.
A bit later an ominous thunderstorm draped my apartment complex. Kids in The Netherlands are taught a rule of thumb that allows you to estimate the distance to the eye of the storm, by using the difference between the speed of sounds and speed of light: count the seconds between lightning and thunder and divide by three to get the distance in kilometres. It was pretty much within a kilometre distance for close to an hour.
Many Korean homes have a PA system that is used in case of emergency (or sometimes to my great annoyance for advertisement). After a sudden blackout, the power came back on and traditional music started playing through the speaker. Annoyed, I walked out of my house and found the same music was played harrowingly loud from all speakers in the hallways. I decided to complain and I walked to the elevators only to find them out of order. Perhaps something serious was going on.
Still not really connecting the three dots: concerned friends, a thunderstorm and a blackout, I grabbed my escape kit and started my 14 floor journey down the staircase. The lobby was full of people and a quick look outside revealed the street in front of my house had been doused in murky water. Suddenly traditional folk music was not my biggest concern anymore.
The rest of the night was somewhat confusing and distressing as I had no idea what to do or how serious it was. Our ground floor flooded, but it stayed quite contained due to swift action from our janitors. Running water was out for a while, but the folk music luckily stopped after some time and I decided to get some sleep as most people in the lobby left as well.
Cars dragged along by the water were piled up in front of my house.
The next day, the destruction became apparent and I woke up to a somewhat post apocalyptic scenery, as the streets were filled with rubbish, destroyed shops, stranded cars dragged along by the water and rescue workers looking for the dozen Seoulites still missing. It turned out, I was one of the lucky ones: almost ten people lost their lives that night, some just around the corner and many more lost homes and possessions.
The convenience store in my building was completely destroyed on the inside.
Bags of rice used to barricade the building next door
Don’t look up
When reading up on why this happened, I discovered Gangnam is famous for flooding, hence the concerned friends. In 2011, 16 people tragically passed away due to massive landslides and as a response, the government built a special flood tunnel. However, flood tunnels, raising dikes and sandbags in front of our doors are hotfixes. The root cause of the problem is man-made global warming. To prevent further deaths, we need more drastic changes.
The floods in Seoul were not an isolated event, every time I open the news nowadays, I read headlines about flooding, droughts and heatwaves. A notable example is the 2021 flood in Southern Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium that wiped a German village off the map and killed around 220 people. “Couldn’t scientists have predicted this”? Is a phrase that was thrown around a lot. The annoying thing is that scientists have been predicting this for decades, but no action is taken.
Climate change is a textbook example of a tragedy of the commons, which is best solved using some type of government or independent mediating body. However, politicians are concerned with short term gain and re-election and implementing stern climate goals may make them less electable for their next term. Ironically, it seems some one-party countries take more action than some liberal democracies, as they have no concern for being reelected.
Luckily, many higher educated and young people are more sensible, resulting in social trends like veganism and second hand clothing stores that now populate many European capitals. Making lifestyle changes may not solve the problem, but can get us in the right direction. It is difficult though, as contradicting information is rife and problems are layered and complex.
Take for example a closely related problem: plastic pollution. Removing plastic wrapping from fruits and vegetables in supermarkets sounds like a simple solution. However, studies also suggest plastic can prolong the shelf-life of vegetables, meaning wrapping them can be more climate friendly. Moreover, it probably depends on the type of fruit and vegetable, not all crops rot at the same rate. The type of plastic most likely matters as well, biodegradable materials might cause less problems. Optimising this takes scientific resources and unfortunately scientists are busy debating climate change and COVID skeptics.
Kurzgesagt recommends to “vote with your ballot and vote with your wallet” meaning to use your voting rights to get a representative in charge that is capable of understanding scientific research and will act accordingly. Voting with your wallet means purchasing climate friendly solutions, even if they are still expensive. If many people buy an electric car, the price will go down and they will eventually become the norm. Both suggestions make sense to me.
Below is a list of lifestyle changes that I’ve been trying to fit into my routine for the last decade or so, though increasingly in the last few years. This comes with some disclaimers: Firstly, although I am a Ph.D. and try to read up whenever I can, this is not my area of expertise: I know enough to know I do not know enough about this. Do your own research and most of all, listen to experts.
Secondly: not being a hypocrite is almost impossible. I still have many habits that are contributing to global warming, and so does almost everyone living in high income countries nowadays. I still feel trying something is better than not trying at all. A police force will not stop all crime, but that is no reason to not have it at all.
Negative emission technology Negative emission technologies (NET) capture greenhouse gases like carbon or methane and store them or convert them into usable output. These technologies are still incredibly expensive and compensating for your entire climate footprint will cost you thousands of euros a month. However, I have been donating some amount to hopefully help grow these to some state where they can be used to compensate emissions economically in the near future.
There are two initiatives that I know of https://climeworks.com/ and https://norlights.com/. The former caters to individuals and the latter only to industry. Climeworks partners with an institute in Iceland, where liquefied CO2 can be stored in the soil safely. At the moment, this is a fairly altruistic endeavour as there is virtually no exchange (in the form of some type of product/return on investment) for the money that you put in, other than the prospect of a better future a few decades from now.
Quality over quantity There is an old expression in Dutch, “Goedkoop is duurkoop”, literally meaning “buying cheap is expensive”. If you buy poorly made low quality products, you often have to replace them frequently, which will be more expensive in the long run. This is still very relevant and can help in the battle against climate change.
As an example, a while ago, I invested in Philips Hue lamps. These bulbs have a lifetime of 25.000 hours (about 11 years if you use them 6 hours a day), which is 25 times that of a regular incandescent bulb. Additionally, they are 80% more energy efficient than conventional LED lights. Normalised by lifetime and cost of energy, these lamps are not expensive.
Producing low quality products typically has a severe impact on the climate. Natural resources have to be used, energy is needed for production and shipping and not long after, the products end in landfills, which are a big source of greenhouse gas. For me personally, buying and living with less also simply makes me happier and more productive. If life had a meaning, it would probably not be to buy as many trousers as possible.
Minimise flying Although transportation accounts for only a small percentage of global greenhouse emissions, the contributing role to global warming of the airline industry is fairly undisputed. I try to attend remote conferences where possible and take trains or ferries for holiday trips.
Reduced consumption of red meat, especially beef, which is one of the most polluting foods due to methane gases expelled by animals directly. Additionally, it has secondary contributing factors like cutting down forests which could be used to grown carbon capturing trees and water consumption.
There are many excellent meat alternatives nowadays like ‘beyond meat’ a purely plant based burger that strongly resembles the taste of real meat. De Vegetarisch Slager (Dutch for The Vegetarian Butcher) has an extensive line of plant based products all looking and tasting very similar to the real deal, with lower greenhouse gas emissions. These are still difficult to find in East Asia, but are increasing in popularity, especially in South Korea.
A second alternative for people that do want the real deal is lab grown meat, which is not commercially available yet to the best of my knowledge but it will likely replace most of real meat consumption sometime in the future. Most people would agree that growing an entire animal around a steak is not efficient, if we could just grow the steak directly, with less resources, we would be better off. Better for the animals, better for the climate and hopefully soon better for our wallet as well.
Decreased consumption of red meat has also been linked to numerous health benefits like a decreased risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer, though only in case-control studies.
Green investment Another way to ‘vote with your wallet’ is to invest only in ‘green’ companies, which can simply be done by putting some savings into green index funds. ASN a Dutch bank, offers a mixed risk fund consisting only of bonds, stocks and micro credits from countries and companies that adhere to some climate goals.
Today is national liberation day, a public holiday in Korea. However, another storm is predicted and streets are eerily quiet. Instead of celebrating, people stay home and are scared because of the effects of global warming. I look forward to a future where politicians act and we do not have to be scared anymore.
