sustainability – Between Hell and High Water

Fighting Adaptation to Reality

By Mike Koetting August 18, 2026

My last post argued that since serious environmental mitigation was politically implausible (at least for the time being), we needed to step up our efforts to adapt to changing environmental conditions. I am not talking about projections of what might happen. I am talking about responding to realities that are facing us here and now.

This post expands on that theme. I start with a few micro-case studies that illustrate some of the challenges. Then I try to place that in a larger focus.

Water: Too Little and Too Much

As I am writing, Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country, is at its lowest level ever. There is serious concern that if the water falls any further, it will no longer be able to support the turbines that provide electric power to a large chunk of the Southwest.

This is part of a bigger water shortage that threatens major impacts on American lifestyle. The Colorado watershed system provides water for about 15% of the nation’s food supply. The water rights in this region are covered by a complex, and outdated, series of water covenants. These need to be renegotiated, which will require major concessions because all the easy cuts have already been made. Federal leadership is desperately needed.

Citizens are starting to encounter a growing number of adverse environmental impacts. A small taste of what’s ahead can be seen in Denver, where neighborhood fights are breaking out between those who are following rules for watering their lawns and those who are flouting them. And this is the easy stuff. What happens when people figure out how much water golf courses are using. Who will decide which is more important to the country, agriculture or golf?

At the other end of the spectrum is the flooding. For instance, the overflow storm reservoirs for Chicago—built not that many years ago with the promise they could accommodate the most extreme situations—have flirted with capacity limits several times this year. While the overall level of rain has not increased that much, the way rain falls has changed. Flooding, in most cases, turns out to be less a function of how much rain falls and more a function of how fast it falls. The torrential nature of the rain in Texas led to 130 deaths from flash flooding on the Fourth of July

The change in rain fall patterns is related to planet warming. The physics of this have been known for two centuries: higher temperatures make climates less stable because even small changes in temperature can exponentially increase the concentration of rainfall. Adapting to this reality will require new (and in some cases very expensive) approaches to managing hitherto unimaginable bouts of heavy rain.

Heat: Fire and Grid

It is well beyond dispute that the world continues to warm. And, to the surprise of no climate scientist, this has led to increased wildfires. Everywhere. There is enormous loss of property and threats to both immediate mortality and longer run increases due to failing air quality.

There are some short-term fixes—better warning systems and better regulation of where and how people can build. (If the latter can be politically feasible; if not, we will certainly be put in a position where taxpayers will have to bail out people who ignored recommendations.)

What really needs to be done is back off temperature. While this is part prevention, there is an immediate problem. If we can stabilize or reduce temperature, it will reduce the current threats from higher temperatures. It seems we have missed the window to hold global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, but we might be able to keep it from rising all the way to 2.0. We might even be able to push back some of the extreme effects we are seeing now.

This will require a number of different actions but one thing that clearly improves the possibilities is reducing reliance on fossil fuels. The most obvious big step is to increase the electrification of the economy, particularly from cleaner energy sources such as wind and solar. We need to continue battery development and deployment and improve the grid to carry electricity from where it can be safely produced to where it is needed. We need also to support the conversion of American transportation, which is responsible for about 28% of all the country’s emissions, to electric vehicles.

Microbes

A recent New Yorker article illustrates how current global warming has caused changes in the world’s microbe communities for which we are not prepared. Vibrio vulnificus, popularly known as flesh-eating bacteria, has flourished in the warmer ocean. It has been responsible for five deaths so far this summer in Louisiana.

What is called for is closer monitoring, more research into specifics (including antidotes to rare infections) and a strong system of increased surveillance and warning. Communication among specialists working in this area is essential.

Climate Migration

This is a qualitatively different problem than the previous as it is more an issue of moral adaption rather than material adaptation. Climate changes are forcing a substantial amount of migration, most within countries, but also enough across countries to upset politics within developed countries, including ours.

It is hard to know what obligation developed countries face. On the one hand, advanced countries have contributed disproportionately to climate problems. On the other hand, as a political matter, if not a practical matter, no country is going to provide open-ended resources to climate migrants, who, in any event, are hard to distinguish from people who want to migrate for a whole host of reasons.

It will be hard to make this problem go away simply by making it harder to immigrate (legally or otherwise) to developed countries. People will continue to find ways in, particularly in large countries like the U.S. It may also be hard to morally justify the horrible conditions created as climate-related issues wipe out means of livelihood and, indeed, make areas uninhabitable. So, while this doesn’t pose the same physical dangers as the above threats, ignoring it carries its own perils. One, for sure, is a loss of international respect that the U.S. once had. It will also lead to more local violence, which inevitably will increase our defense budget. There is also the corrosive impact on our society of actively ignoring the well-being of people who are suffering through no fault of their own.

Overview

Even a casual reader will notice that the current administration’s attitude toward these necessary adaptations ranges from indifference to, more often, hostility.

The Trump administration has actively hindered alternative energy sources and openly encouraged fossil fuels. They have dissolved the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods, which was set up under President Reagan in 1988 to provide scientific advice and coordinate best practices for defending against dangerous microbes at all levels of government. They have gleefully dismantled foreign aid efforts.

There is not sufficient appreciation for how awful this is. It gets swept into the big “What did you expect from this horrible administration.” But failing to adapt, often even opposing, potential adaptations to threats across a broad range of issues is specifically harmful to the country. Ask the people in Spokane whose houses burned down, the people of Chicago with asthma, the victims of flesh-eating bacteria where it never occurred before, the town in Arizona going out of existence for lack of water, and so forth. These are not future problems. These are real problems today.

I think the explanation that Trump and supporters are simply giving into the grift from big corporations is not sufficient. That is surely a factor, but not complete. After all, how much grift is necessary?

Of course, having gotten this far into “climate change is a hoax” it is hard to back down without having to admit the entire framework is bogus. Which would obviously be detrimental to the brand. So that keeps a large portion of Republicans officeholders who presumably know better pretending that everything is okay.

But there is something else at work, which I think is an unfortunate combination of Trump’s personality and some larger disfunctions in our society.

Trump personality has been amply dissected in the media. The degree of narcissism simply doesn’t allow him to accept that there are others whose expertise overrules his gut instincts. And he has been able to turn what is in fact a dangerous impulse into the basis for amassing power…and ego satisfaction.

What’s more interesting to me is why so many people, many of whom are most directly in harm’s way, seem to be anxious to hang onto the self-destructive impulses to avoid adaptation measures. My guess is that there enough people who feel their life is out of control and, taking cues from Trump and others, blame that on science, which they see as part of the “liberal elite”. I can’t possibly know what is really going on with these people; my life is too removed. But I can imagine the attitude that scientists, who are after all part of the educated class that has not only been doing much better than they have, but keeps advocating for things that either seem irrelevant or require changes that they don’t really want to make or that in some cases are specifically against their interests. So when Trump (and ilk) offer an alternative view of the world, they are happy to jump on it.

This group is large enough that it becomes key to a larger Republican agenda that is otherwise unsalable. Thus, we get a situation where government is steadfastly refusing measures necessary to adapt to existing climate conditions. To be sure, I am not implying that what needs to be done is easy or even always clear. But it is abjectly wrong to try to pretend the clear and present dangers of environmental change do not demand response.

No amount of threat and bluster were able to make the sun revolve around the earth. Apparently, the current Republicans are willing to be remembered as equally fatuous—and more dangerous to their own citizens.

Fifty Years of Environmental Avoidance

By Mike Koetting August 4, 2026

I recently ran across an article contending that the 1972 Limits to Growth projections about environmental threats were on track. That reminded me that when these were first published, my friend Rick Casey, then at the National Catholic Reporter, commissioned me to write a review. Although long since moved on, he was able to track down the review for me.

Turns out, it held up fairly well. But, before that….

The Limits to Growth

The publication, Limits to Growth, was the outgrowth of computer-generated models by a group of MIT scientists. It attracted considerable attention because both the technology and the findings were then novel. (Hard as it is to imagine, there was a time in my life when computer modeling was a novelty.)

The model made projections of five systems—agricultural production, industrial output, population, non-renewable resource consumption and pollution—and their interaction effects. The conclusions were dismal. They predicted the net effects of these trends unmoderated from then current trends would result in some kind of system breakdown around 2050. They specifically warned, however, there would be a long run up that looked like everything was under control, but as we got closer to one crisis or another, it would be more difficult to moderate trends because the phases leading up to crisis would accelerate exponentially. It was the scientific equivalent of Hemmingway’s observation on how you go bankrupt. “Gradually. Then suddenly.”

The slow-motion approach to collapse complicates evaluating the models’ accuracy since the key-point is when the trends change direction. Over the years since then, the trends continued close to the original projections. (Renewable resources have depleted more slowly than modeled through the development of new technologies—such as fracking—allowing more extraction. The authors of the original study had acknowledged this was a possibility, but observed this would create different problems, which they in fact have.) However, none of this “proves” the trends will turn when the models say they will, although, in truth, the original authors never claimed these were exact dates but more illustrative of what would happen if trends continued.

The most recent re-running of the data points suggests that the worst scenario has been avoided but the more central timelines for a crisis are pretty much unchanged. Additional research has pointed to some other factors that might be included in the model—for instance, global temperature—but all agree on a central thesis: human welfare depends on several interacting factors and the current trends cannot be carried on indefinitely without a major problem.

My 1972 Review: Back to the Future

It is slightly amusing that I thought the argument over the environment was already old hat, complaining it had been going on “for three or four years now.” I said then the world was divided into ”environmentalists threatening doom at every turn and their critics promising technological salvation just around the corner.” From my perspective, this description hasn’t changed much. It’s like the last 50 years never happened. Apparently, no amount of accumulating data makes a difference.

This outcome is not at all inconsistent with my overall assessment in 1972:

I outlined the reasons then and the intervening years have not moderated those concerns.

Why We Can’t Address

The major problem remains there is no economic or political structure in which addressing global environmental issues is compelling. These problems are enormously complicated and are international in scope. Every one is responsible for the environment which, in real world terms, means no one is responsible. No unilateral action by a single country, or even a group of countries, will by itself make a difference at scale. We can argue if all joined hands and made the plunge, we could change the future. Possibly. The success of the Montreal Accord on chlorofluorocarbons shows it can be done. But how many of us can really imagine that happening on some as ubiquitous as fossil fuel? In the sphere of what needs to be done, the Paris Climate Accords were moderate and the world is well short of meeting its goals, whether measured by country or overall. (Or in the case of the United States simply refusing to participate, its idiot president insisting there is no climate danger.)

We all assume that among the world’s leaders, there will always be some who feel they can free ride on the efforts of others. And among the world’s citizens, the political lift will be much greater in developed countries because they will have to give more. One can argue that would be fair because developed countries have used more of the world’s resources and contributed more to the environmental problems as a function of their development. Undoubtedly true. But most of the people who would vote for that do not live in developed countries.

Some people understand the reality of the threat and figure they can make money now and leave the future to others. As early as 1977 Exxon executives knew with relative precision the impact of fossil fuels on global temperatures. Their response: obfuscate and sow endless doubt. They, and similar corporations, knew the score; they chose to not simply hide it, but deny it. More recently, the corporate titans haven’t even bothered to hide the facts. Turns out it is much easier to simply bribe the Republican party (and Democrats if necessary) to ignore the reality.

Another response, think Donald Trump, is to use the issue to divide and deflect. I don’t know what Trump really knows about the environment, but I know he has used environmental issues to attack Democrats and blame economic woes in certain working class areas on Democratic concerns about the environment. It is true that some of the needed environmental steps will erode jobs in some sectors. On the other hand, they will create new jobs. Trump has never understood, never wanted to understand because it doesn’t help him, that the role of a leader is to help a nation resolve the tradeoffs that are necessary for its long-term welfare.

Most people don’t think about environmental issues much. It’s simply too overwhelming. Faced with a problem that seemingly has no straightforward solution—and the effects of which seem some time off in the distance—people with lives to live simply tune out. They may, at some level, connect the extreme weather the country is experiencing with environmental problems, but they can’t draw a straight line (or even a crooked one) between anything they could do and the bad effects they are experiencing.

So What Now?

Assuming the Limits to Growth assessments are anywhere near correct—and all available evidence suggests they are–I don’t see any way to avoid stepping in some really nasty stuff.

Consequently, I think the most realistic imperative is to make sure we are investing enough in adaptation. I am not suggesting we give up on preventing environmental degradation. But I suspect by the time things get sufficiently bad that a critical mass of people stop fighting the issue, it will be very hard to stop the downward trends. What could have been done 50 years ago with modest pain will require Herculean efforts.

Since we are unable to commit to preventing the problem, we should at least be realistic about its nature. For functional purposes, the world has already blown past the 1.5 degree mark of the Paris Accords and we’re on our way to a global temperature increase of at least 2.0 degrees. We have seen the problems this causes. (While I was writing this, the air quality here in Chicago was well beyond hazardous due to smoke from record numbers of wildfires.) The is no reason to expect the future will not get worse.

Adapting to the changes already happening—actual, not forecast—will entail international, national, and regional efforts to respond to specific problems. I anticipate a subsequent post to further consider the issue of adaption.

In the meantime, just starting to address this will be politically complicated because it would require admitting that it is happening. It would also require rethinking revenue sources and reprioritizing expenses.

To the extent polls can be trusted, an overwhelming majority of the public would be fine with that. But there is a powerful group of people who don’t want to see that happening, in part because they think their wealth can buy them out of environmental issues.

The question is whether there are politicians with the skill and courage to capitalize on what the majority want, or are we going to continue to be ruled by leaders who have figured out how to profit from denying inconvenient truths.

AI’s Practical Concerns-Part Two

By Mike Koetting August 19, 2025

Today’s blog is the second of two posts about AI. It’s not about whether AI is good or bad for society. That’s a worthwhile discussion and I expect it to remain a hot topic for the foreseeable future. These posts, however, are based on the observable reality that, like it or not, it’s coming.

These posts focus on some practical questions about its arrival. Part One looked at some of the economic impacts; today’s post considers environmental issues and questions of security and reliability.

Posturing of Republican States a Planetary Threat

By Mike Koetting April 22,2024

My last post used property insurance to illustrate how climate change is already intruding on our day-to-day lives. When I started that post, I had the vague idea that this might be causing some softening of attitudes, even in Red states. Talk about misbegotten hopes!

Rather, the impact of these states pretending environmental threats are not man-made has a greater rippling effect than I anticipated.