It's like your health – bad habits make it worse

Climate change is making difficult situations even worse, just as poor habits will make your health worse.

We know that poor diet affects health, and we know lack of exercise affects health, and when you put them both together, it REALLY affects our health.

We are using our natural resources at the edge of their capacity, or beyond it. For example, agriculture in West Texas relies on extracting water from the aquifers in winter. They are already extracting more water than is being replenished, so they will run out of water in a few decades.

The added impact of climate change makes the situation worse, and farmers in West Texas are likely to run out of water sooner.

The natural variability of the climate system puts stress on human activity through droughts, floods, severe winters, heatwaves, storms, etc. Climate change is making this natural variability more severe. 


The health analogy was used by Katharine Hayhoe, Research Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas Tech University, in this interview.