I recently read an interesting take on climate change:

Or maybe we do look - really look - but then, inevitably, we seem to forget. Remember and then forget again. Climate change is like that; it's hard to keep it in your head for very long. We engage in this odd form of on-again-off-again ecological amnesia for perfectly rational reasons. We deny because we fear that letting in the full reality of this crisis will change everything. And we are right.¹

Weather extremes are increasingly costly. In the United States, each major disaster seems to cost taxpayers upward of a billion dollars. The cost of Superstorm Sandy is estimated at USD65 billion. That mammoth storm hit just one year after Hurricane Irene, which caused around USD10 billion in damages. Irene was just one episode in a year that saw 14 billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. alone. Globally, 2011 holds the record as the costliest year ever for disasters, with total damages reaching at least USD380 billion. Policymakers are still locked in the vice grip of austerity logic, whereby rising emergency expenditures are being offset with cuts to everyday public spending. Nowhere is this more evident than that which is being witnessed in many parts of New Orleans some nine years after Katrina. This attitude will make societies even more vulnerable during the next disaster - a classic vicious cycle.

It is not a good idea to neglect the foundations of our societies in this way. In the context of climate change, however, using austerity logic looks downright suicidal.  There are many important debates to be had about the best way to respond to climate change including:

• Storm wall construction or ecosystem restoration
• Decentralized renewables: for example combining industrial scale wind power with natural gas or nuclear power
• Small-scale organic farms or industrial food systems

There is, however, no scenario in which we can avoid huge levels of spending in the public sector - not if we are serious about preventing catastrophic levels of warming and minimizing the destructive potential of the coming storms.²

It's no mystery where that public money needs to be spent. Much of it should go to ambitious emission-reducing projects like the smart grid, light rail, citywide composting systems, building sustainable retrofits, visionary transit systems, and urban redesigns to keep us from spending so much of our daily lives in traffic jams. The private sector is ill equipped to take on most of these large infrastructure investments if the services are to be accessible. They must be in order to be effective but the profit margins that attract private players simply aren't there.

Transit is a good example. In March 2014, when air pollution in French cities reached dangerously high levels, officials in Paris made a snap decision to discourage car use by making public transit free for three days. Obviously private operators were incensed and strenuously resisted such measures. Let's face it, by all rights our transit systems should be responding with the same kind of urgency to precipitously high levels of atmospheric carbon. Rather than allowing subway and bus fares to rise while service falls off, we need to be lowering prices and expanding services - regardless of the costs.

Public funds also need to go to the equally important, though less glamorous projects and services that will help us prepare for the coming heavy weather. It means coming up with the new non-profit disaster insurance programmes so that people who have lost everything to a hurricane, tornado or forest fire are not left at the mercy of a private insurance industry that is already adapting to climate change by avoiding payouts and slapping victims with extortionate rate increases.

According to Amy Bach, cofounder of the San Francisco-based advocacy group United Policyholders, disaster insurance is becoming very much like health insurance. We're going to have to increasingly take the profit motive out of the system so that it operates efficiently and effectively, but without generating obscene executive salaries and bonuses and shareholder returns. Because it's not going to be a sustainable model. A publicly traded insurance company in the face of climate change is not a sustainable business model for the end user, the consumer.' It's that or a disaster capitalism free-for-all: those are the choices.³

These types of improvements are in far greater demand in developing countries like the Philippines, Kenya, and Bangladesh that are already facing some of the most severe climate impacts. Hundreds of billions of dollars are urgently needed to build seawalls; storage and distribution networks for food, water, and medical supplies; early warning systems and shelters for hurricanes, cyclones and tsunamis - as well as public health systems able to cope with increases in climate-related diseases like malaria.

Though mechanisms to protect against possible government corruption are needed, these countries should not have to spend their health care and education budgets on costly disaster insurance plans purchased from transnational corporations, as is largely happening now.

The essential question now is: how in the world are we going to pay for all of this? A 2011 survey by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs looked at how much it would cost for humanity to overcome poverty, increase food production to eradicate poverty without degrading land and water resources, and avert the climate change catastrophe.' The price tag was USD1.9 trillion a year for the next 40 years - and at least half of the required investments would have to be realized in developing countries.'⁴   

Unfortunately, public spending is heading in the opposite direction almost everywhere except for a handful of fast-growing so-called emerging economies. In North America and Europe, the economic crisis that began in 2008 is still being used as a pretext to slash aid abroad and cut climate programmes at home. In Southern Europe, environmental policies and regulations have been clawed back. Fierce austerity measures and drastically reduced subsidies for renewable programmes are sending solar projects and wind farms spiralling toward default and closure. Even the United Kingdom is cutting government support for renewables.

If we are to collectively meet the enormous challenges of the climate change crisis, a robust social movement will be required that demands (and creates) political leadership that is not only committed to making polluters pay for a climate-ready public sphere, but also willing to revive two lost arts: long-term public planning, and saying no to powerful corporations.⁵

¹ Norgaard, Kari Marie. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011
² Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything. Toronto, ON: Random House of Canada, 2014
³ Ibid.
⁴ Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided,' Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, World Bank. (November 2012): ix; personal interview with Patrick Michaels, July 1 2011.
⁵ op. cit. Note 2