When to start worrying that something catastrophic is on the horizon? Most of us tend to start at some point after it has already happened. We buy insurance against a particular disaster only after we have experienced it (and then cancel it a few years later). We fail to evacuate when told to. In 1914, Niall Ferguson’s The Politics of Catastrophe tells us, “few grasped until late July the imminence of Armageddon”. In 2001 an emergency agency stated that a hurricane hitting New Orleans was one of America’s most likely disaster scenarios. There was a near miss in 2004. Yet the city failed to prepare. These bad instincts of ours are why we were not ready for the pandemic, despite repeated warnings from scientists and officialdom in the years leading up to it, and even, in Britain, when we could see what was happening in Italy in early March 2020. And it is why we are not going to prepare properly for the next (and perhaps last) big calamity — climate change.
Surveys tell us concern about climate change spikes only when it seems like it is already too late to prevent damage — like during a heatwave — then falls again. (Polling this week found 70 per cent of voters think the recent high temperatures are caused by climate change).
