The arrival of a Typhoon Gaemi last week coincided with the publication of a piece at Yale Climate Connection on the upcoming bill for coastal defenses in the US: US$400 billion by 2040.
Last week’s column noted how Taiwan is desperately short of construction workers. I doubt “sea wall and dike construction workers” are on the radar of most readers, but they should be. Indeed, the extensive overbuilding of residential housing has crowded out construction workers needed elsewhere, one of the many ways the housing bubble is eating Taiwan.
FLOODING
Photo: Chen Wen-chan, Taipei Times
For example, a September 2022 piece in Frontiers in Environmental Science, a team of local scholars ran the numbers for Yilan County at mid-century. Flooding affects not only coastal areas but also downstream areas. In Yilan the affected areas are downstream, for which the “flooded area in the middle of the century is expected to increase by approximately 1.7 times.”
A similar study of the flooding threat, identified areas hazarded by increased flooding showed that by 2075 the areas at greatest risk will be coastal townships in Changhua, Chiayi, Yunlin and Tainan. Rice growing regions all over the island will be affected.
That midwestern area of the island is also impacted by subsidence due to unrestricted groundwater mining. According to a September 2022 study in Environmental Research Communications, that area can be expected to lose up to a thousand square kilometers of land by 2100 as the sea rises and the land subsides. Other studies give similar figures.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsun, Taipei Times
RAINFALL EXTREMES
A November 2018 study published in Water found that not only will rainfall extremes increase by 20 percent but the time it takes for the peak rainfall to be reached will fall by eight hours. Over time, the article predicts, river beds will migrate as powerful currents scour riverbanks. This will have to be fought by armies of workers.
To put those maintenance and construction needs in perspective, by 2050 Taiwan’s population is projected to both fall and age. By mid-century too all the beautiful new residential blocks built in the current era will be starting to crumble. The demand for construction workers merely for maintenance and upkeep will be enormous. Heat deaths will begin a 10-fold rise by roughly 2050, studies project, especially in the south. How will anyone work outdoors?
The only good thing that we can expect from our projected population fall of over a projected 30 percent is massive drops in carbon output. Of course, much of that drop will come as carbon intensive industrial living systems are no longer used because they cannot be maintained in the face of war and climate change.
Think that cannot happen here? The loss of the Philippine railways after World War II because of war, volcanic eruptions and failure to invest should not be smugly read as a moral lesson about development, but a sign of things to come for Taiwan, facing essentially similar threats.
Just think of how difficult it is these days to find an old guy who still does water and electricity handyman work. Now multiply by 25 years.
FALLING CROP YIELDS
In May, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and the Ministry of Environment published The Climate Change Scientific Report 2024, a 600-page compendium of what will happen in Taiwan as humans continue to bake the earth.
It noted that crop yields are slated to fall roughly 10 percent by mid-century for major grain crops. Farm output and earnings will plummet even as prices in urban markets rise.
Because a portion of grain output goes to other purposes, like feeding livestock, price rises in urban areas are always proportionally higher than the farm output loss. For example, suppose a farm produces a thousand bushels of grain but uses 200 to feed its animals. The farmer sells 800 bushels to the market. If a drought causes a 20 percent drop in production, 200 bushels still go to livestock, leaving 600 for the market. The market experiences a 25 percent drop in available grain, driving prices up 25 percent, not 20 percent.
This concatenation of recurring disasters will make things like crop and flood insurance, so necessary to the functioning of agricultural systems, loom large. The issue will not be whether these things can be insured for, but whether the government can avoid insolvency in doing so.
Consider the debts currently accumulated by government energy-related firms in holding prices stable in today’s relatively easily handled conditions. Now multiply by 25 years.
These changes sweeping the global climate have powerful implications for the future of democratic politics and political stability. What kind of politics will we have as crises normalize over time?
Commentators often attempt to understand this century in terms of the previous one, but a better guide might be the 17th century. That was the last time humanity faced major global climate change, fortunately short-lived, and our species did not perform well. In floods, droughts and wars, roughly a third of the world died. Political instability was widespread.
Consider the words of journalist Hamilton Nolan, writing on the lack of public discussion of the coming insurance industry apocalypse in the US: “We are still mired in the ‘Everything is fine!’ phase, where nervous, sweating politicians with pasted-on smiles beckon you into their doomed states while silently praying that the collapse doesn’t come while they’re still in office.”
Now multiply this attitude by 25 years.
Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.
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