3-13: Societal Responses to Regional Climate Change

Forecasting by Analogy

Michael H. Glantz, Editor
Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 428 pp.

Summary

A few quotes:

"The purpose of the book is to determine how flexible (or rigid societies are or have been in dealing with climate-related environmental change."

"Societies everywhere have already shown the propensity to prepare for the last climate anomaly by which they were affected. However, such anomalies seldom seem to recur in the same place with the same intensity, or with the same societal impacts."

"Analogues can help us to identify societal strengths and weaknesses in coping with extreme meteorological events..."

This book contains 10 cases studies of how citizens respond to regional environmental changes that seem irreversible. The subjects of these case studies are show in the figure below. Two of the ten case studies are presented in this document; case 1 is the The Ogallala Aquifer Depletion, and case 2 is titled "Changes in the Mississippi River System." The former case is also followed by a summary of Donald Wilhite's article in Micchael Glantz's Societal Responses to Regional Climate Change: Forecasting by Analogy

Dr. Takle's Summary of Glantz's Case Studies Summary

• There is a need to identify how societies respond
• Involvement of state and local government is very important
• There is a need to generate awareness among decisionmakers of the problem
• There are sometimes conflicting signals
• An extreme event is the "straw that breaks the camel's back"
• Intergenerational equity is always an issue
• Ad hoc responses are favored over long-term planned responses
• In come cases, ad hoc decisions create rigidity that inhibit society's ability to respond to future changes
• Coalition-building is an important part of creating awareness as well as coping with climate-related problems
• Society is changing; it is necessary to take societal change into account when considering responses to climate change
• If there are winners and losers, there will be large disincentives on the part of winners to change.