Can Covid-19 Response Be A Model For Climate Action?

Lowy Institute - Noah Yim | Natasha Kassam

Mass behaviour change, policies guided by science, acting for the greater good: just what the climate crisis needs.

An empty street in San Francisco, 25 April (Liu Guanguan/China News Service via Getty Images)

In 2020, the world will see the largest annual drop in carbon dioxide emissions in history.

The havoc wreaked by the coronavirus and its accompanying lockdowns has seen fleets of planes grounded and factories shudder to a halt.

Levels of mobility in the world’s largest cities have fallen below 10% of usual traffic.

The International Energy Agency predicts that Covid-19 could wipe out international demand for coal, oil, and gas, with only renewable energy showing resilience.

The preliminary data from some of the world’s biggest economies shows that global emissions are in for a sharp, if temporary, decline. Early numbers from Europe suggest that the continent could see a 24% drop in EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) emissions for the whole year. Global emissions will likely only fall by 5% – a reminder that most of the world’s emissions do not come from transportation.

But economies around the world are lifting their lockdowns. China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, saw a 25% decrease in emissions over its four-week lockdown. Factories in China are back online, and as in previous economic disruptions, stimulus packages and increased targets could outweigh the short-term impacts on energy and emissions.

With a few notable exceptions, most politicians and leaders are engaging in informed, rigorous discourse based on scientific advice. This is precisely the kind of discourse the climate crisis has lacked for so long.

Publics recognise the challenge ahead. In China, 87% say that climate change is as serious a crisis as Covid-19 in the long term. While the number in Australia is much lower, the majority – 59% – agree. Given the significant personal and economic sacrifices many publics have made to combat Covid-19, will these concerns finally translate into real progress in addressing climate change, once the current crisis has subsided?

The prospects look good. Covid-19 has put science front and centre. With a few notable exceptions, most politicians and leaders are engaging in informed, rigorous discourse based on scientific advice – whether about sending children to school or the need for onerous social-distancing guidelines. This is precisely the kind of discourse the climate crisis has lacked for so long – an ability to make effective socioeconomic policy arguments on the basis of sound scientific modeling.

And COVID-19 has been met with a resurgence in bipartisanship and political function in many parts of the world, the likes of which haven’t been seen in decades. There are conservative governments instituting utilitarian, Keynesian economic measures that social democrats like Bernie Sanders are praising. Spending bills of historic proportions are passing through legislatures as if they were uncontentious, everyday appropriation bills.

Finally, this pandemic has energised society into acting with consideration for greater public good. Despite the tragic but relatively low numbers of infections and deaths in Australia, the public has galvanised to comply with otherwise illiberal stay-at-home orders, out of recognition for public good.

Science, bipartisanship, and public will: we’re going to need all three to crest the climate crisis. It will need deep, complex engagement with genuinely difficult policy decisions based off rigorous scientific advice, paired with commitments from all political camps to rise above meaningless “gotcha” point-scoring, and acceptance from all members of society to incur relatively small costs today to avoid far greater ones tomorrow.

However, as has been the case in the past few years, this may be too much to ask in a post-coronavirus world. The 1918 flu pandemic has undoubtedly been the most frequently used historical analogy this year.

However, it did not receive this much attention in its immediate aftermath. Gina Kolata, in Flu, writes, “… the flu was expunged from newspapers, magazines, textbooks, and society’s collective memory. … the epidemic simply was so dreadful and so rolled up in people’s minds with the horrors of the war that most people did not want to think about it or write about it once the terrible year of 1918 was over.”

It is entirely possible that after the present pandemic is over, society will want to forget about it as quickly as possible. It is a perfectly understandable reaction. Already, a healthy appetite for escapism exists to distract us from the banality of every day.

So we may forget the overriding public good that we are all so diligently considering in our day-to-day behaviours. There may be antipathy towards wide-scale social mobilisation or aversion to governments calling upon society to incur even more costs for greater public good.

Furthermore, the low price of fossil fuels may see countries revert to less sustainable methods of energy generation to jump-start their economies, relegating the climate crisis to the bench in the name of economic restoration.

Nonetheless, Covid-19 will likely lead to permanent changes, whether in tax policy, the arts industry or the nature of work.

Will the post-Covid world see our rekindled respect for scientific fact, bipartisanship, and a more robust social contract help us confront climate change?

Or will crippling economic burdens and hard borders see more isolationism and environmental destruction for short-term economic benefit?

Some governments are already flagging the need to alter environmental standards to boost economic activity.

But business groups are suggesting that the rebuilding of virus-rattled economies can be done hand-in-hand with the transition to net-zero emissions.

Perhaps climate policy – historically relegated to the “too-hard” basket – stands a chance in the new world.

Links

• Planes grounded by coronavirus pandemic sit idle at airports around the world – in pictures 
• Citymapper Mobility Index: % of city moving compared to usual
• Oil Market Report - April 2020
• Global Energy Review 2020
• European power and carbon markets affected by COVID-19 – an early impact assessment
• Analysis: Coronavirus temporarily reduced China’s CO2 emissions by a quarter
• Australia will need to raise GST to pay coronavirus debt, tax expert says
• As we turn to creativity in isolation, the coronavirus is a calamity on top of an arts crisis
• Will COVID-19 ultimately change the way we work?
• ‘Cashed-up activists’ should not be able to hold up developments, Australia's resources minister says
• Australian businesses call for climate crisis and virus economic recovery to be tackled together

Unsuitable For 'Human Life To Flourish': Up To 3B Will Live In Extreme Heat By 2070, Study Warns

USA TODAY - Doyle Rice

Climate change: How a warmer Earth could mean more snow

Climate change is making winters colder despite rising temperatures and hotter summers. Here’s why.

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Key Points By 2070, up to 3 billion people are likely to live in climate conditions 'deemed unsuitable for human life to flourish.' Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could halve the number of people exposed to such hot conditions. The study was prepared by an international research team of archaeologists, ecologists and climate scientists.

If global warming continues unchecked, the heat that's coming later this century in some parts of the world will bring "nearly unlivable" conditions for up to 3 billion people, a study released Monday said.

The authors predict that by 2070,  much of the world's population is likely to live in climate conditions that are "warmer than conditions deemed suitable for human life to flourish."

The study warned that unless greenhouse gas emissions are curtailed, average annual temperatures will rise beyond the climate "niche" in which humans have thrived for 6,000 years.

That "niche" is equivalent to average yearly temperatures of roughly 52 to 59 Fahrenheit. The researchers found that people, despite all forms of innovations and migrations, have mostly lived in these climate conditions for several thousand years.

"We show that in a business-as-usual climate change scenario, the geographical position of this temperature niche is projected to shift more over the coming 50 years than it has moved (in the past 6,000 years)," the study warned.

These brutally hot climate conditions are currently experienced by just 0.8% of the global land surface, mostly in the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert, but by 2070 the conditions could spread to 19% of the Earth’s land area. LucVi, Getty Images/iStockphoto

The future scenario used in the paper is one in which atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are high. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas releases “greenhouse” gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane into Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.

The emissions have caused the planet’s temperatures to rise to levels that cannot be explained by natural factors, scientists report.

Temperatures over the next few decades are projected to increase rapidly as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions.

Without climate mitigation or migration, by 2070 a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to average annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today, the study said.

These brutally hot climate conditions are currently experienced by just 0.8% of the global land surface, mostly in the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert, but by 2070 the conditions could spread to 19% of the Earth’s land area.

This includes large portions of northern Africa, the Middle East, northern South America, South Asia, and parts of Australia.

"Large areas of the planet would heat to barely survivable levels and they wouldn’t cool down again," said study co-author Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

"Not only would this have devastating direct effects, it leaves societies less able to cope with future crises like new pandemics. The only thing that can stop this happening is a rapid cut in carbon emissions.”

Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could halve the number of people exposed to such hot conditions. “The good news is that these impacts can be greatly reduced if humanity succeeds in curbing global warming,” said study co-author Tim Lenton, a climate specialist from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

“Our computations show that each degree warming (Celsius) above present levels corresponds to roughly 1 billion people falling outside of the climate niche," Lenton said. "It is important that we can now express the benefits of curbing greenhouse gas emissions in something more human than just monetary terms.”

The study, which was prepared by an international research team of archaeologists, ecologists and climate scientists, was published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In our current climate, the most extreme heat is restricted to the small black areas in the Sahara Desert region. But by 2070, that area will expand to the shaded areas across portions of Africa, Asia, Australia and South America, according to the study. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences

Links

• Climate Change Has Already Made Parts Of The World Too Hot For Humans
• 2020 expected to be Earth's warmest year on record, scientists say
• Will an 'unprecedented decline' in carbon emissions help limit climate change?
• Arctic will see ice-free summers by 2050 as globe warms, study says
• The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance
• Hot, sleepless nights will get more common with climate change
• It’s already getting too hot and humid in some places for humans to survive
• Unsurvivable Heat Was Predicted to Blast Earth in the Future. Instead, It's Happening Now.
• Potentially lethal heat waves are more common than scientists thought
• Heat and Humidity Are Already Reaching the Limits of Human Tolerance

Robert De Niro, Madonna Lead Call For Politicians To Avoid Post-Lockdown “Return To Normal”

NME - Charlotte Krol

They urge a "profound overhaul of our goals, values, and economies"

Robert De Niro, Madonna, Cate Blanchett.
CREDIT: George Pimentel/Getty Images; Fabio Diena / Alamy Stock Photo; Isa Foltin/WireImage

More than 200 high-profile actors and creatives have joined scientists in an open letter urging politicians to systematically upend life after the coronavirus to avoid “ecological disaster”.

Robert De Niro, Madonna, Cate Blanchett and others have signed the editorial ‘No To A Return To Normal’ published in Le Monde (May 6) that calls on world leaders and citizens “to undertake a profound overhaul of our goals, values, and economies,” in the wake of COVID-19.

The letter, which was written by Academy Award-winning French actress Juliette Binoche and astrophysicist Aurélien Barrau, states that the pandemic is “inviting us to examine what is essential. And what we see is simple: ‘adjustments’ are not enough. The problem is systemic.”

It warns that “the massive extinction of life on Earth is no longer in doubt, and all indicators point to a direct existential threat. Unlike a pandemic, however severe, a global ecological collapse will have immeasurable consequences.”

They also point to the “pursuit of consumerism” and “an obsession with productivity” which has “led us to deny the value of life itself.”

They add: “We believe it is unthinkable to ‘go back to normal,’” as the COVID-19 outbreak eases.

Robert de Niro

Adam Driver, Willem Dafoe, Rooney Mara, Penelope Cruz, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Alejandro G Inarritu, Paolo Sorrentino, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Pedro Almodovar, Guillaume Canet,  Nathalie Baye and Monica Bellucci are among the others who have lent their signatures to the letter.

Here’s the text in full:

“The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy. This crisis is, however, inviting us to examine what is essential. And what we see is simple: “adjustments” are not enough. The problem is systemic.

“The ongoing ecological catastrophe is a meta-crisis: the massive extinction of life on Earth is no longer in doubt, and all indicators point to a direct existential threat.

"Unlike a pandemic, however severe, a global ecological collapse will have immeasurable consequences.

“We therefore solemnly call upon leaders — and all of us as citizens – to leave behind the unsustainable logic that still prevails and to undertake a profound overhaul of our goals, values, and economies.

“The pursuit of consumerism and an obsession with productivity have led us to deny the value of life itself: that of plants, that of animals, and that of a great number of human beings. 

"Pollution, climate change, and the destruction of our remaining natural zones has brought the world to a breaking point.

“For these reasons, along with increasing social inequalities, we believe it is unthinkable to ‘go back to normal’.

“The radical transformation we need – at all levels – demands boldness and courage. It will not happen without a massive and determined commitment. 

"We must act now. It is as much a matter of survival as one of dignity and coherence.”

Links

• Mark Carney: 'We Can't Self-Isolate From Climate Change'
• Why It Doesn’t Make Economic Sense To Ignore Climate Change In Our Recovery From The Pandemic
• Pandemic Also A Reckoning For Climate Change, Turnbull Tells British Audience
• COVID-19 Is A Dress Rehearsal For Entrepreneurial Approaches To Climate Change
• (AU) Australian Businesses Call For Climate Crisis And Virus Economic Recovery To Be Tackled Together
• (AU) Australia Listened To The Experts On Coronavirus. It's Time We Heard Them On Climate Change
• IMF Leader Says Pandemic Stimulus Must Focus On Battling Climate Crisis

Meet The 8-Year-Old Climate Activist Cleaning Up India

Global Citizen - Catherine Caruso

Licypriya Kangujam wants children to have a better, cleaner planet.

The Child Movement

Licypriya Kangujam is the 8-year-old Indian climate activist taking the world by storm.

As the founder of the Child Movement and one of the youngest climate activists to date, Kangujam is known for calling on world leaders and global organizations to take immediate action to combat climate change.

She first began her activism two years ago at the age of 6. She started out by urging the Indian government to change its climate policies to help curb the amount of air pollution in the country.

After attending the Asian Ministerial Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction in July 2018, Kangujam knew she wanted to get more involved in climate change activism.

Since then, she has founded an organization, traveled to 32 countries, attended her first parliament strike, and called on world leaders to take direct action on climate change at the 2019 United Nations Climate Conference (COP25) in Madrid.

The Child Movement

She has also advocated to include climate lessons in school curriculums, which will be implemented in schools in Rajasthan and Gujarat at the start of the next academic year.

Kangujam’s main areas of focus are climate justice and climate education, and she has a list of demands for her government that must be fulfilled to achieve those goals. She also wants fossil fuel and carbon emissions to be regulated.

"This will bring transparency and accountability to our leaders. This will benefit people, especially millions of poor people in the country," Kangujam told Global Citizen.

She wants every student in India to plant a total of 10 trees each upon passing their final exams. With around 350 million students in the country, doing so would result in the planting of 3.5 billion new trees every year.

"All the above ... policies are possible," she said. "This can help to fight climate change and also change the system of the world. This can go a long way."

As a youth activist, Kangujam has had to take some extra steps to make sure that her voice is heard.

Social media, particularly Twitter, has placed an important role in amplifying her voice and ensuring that her message is spread to world leaders and other activists across the globe. The UN has also given her a platform to raise her concerns about the future of the planet.

In doing so, she has been able to meet with political leaders to discuss various climate issues plaguing India, like air pollution and its links to poor health and illness.

"I’m pressuring the government to ensure the health of every child in India. I will continue to put more pressure on our world leaders," Kangujam said. "The future is the children. The world needs to make a better planet for us. Our leaders need to act now before it’s too late."

Links

• Children Of The Crisis
• Every Child On Earth Faces 'Existential Threats' From Climate Change, Report Finds
• How Climate Experts Think About Raising Children Who Will Inherit A Planet In Crisis
• Health Impacts Of Climate Change On Children Don't Need Exaggerating
• One Thing You Can Do: Talk To Your Children About Climate Change
• Our Young Girls Are Bearing The Burden Of Climate Action. But Should They Be?
• Greta Thunberg And Mass Protests Defined The Year In Climate Change

Media Data Shows Covid-19 Has Stolen Climate Change's Thunder

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

To get a sense how the impetus for action on climate change has been eclipsed by the COVID-19 pandemic, you only need to look at how the media’s interest on the matter has shifted.

From what looks like an all-time peak in Australia’s interest in a warming world during the bushfire crisis in January - with 4.5 per cent of articles about climate change - interest has since cratered to be less than 1 per cent, according to analysis from Streem, a media monitoring firm.

Stealing their thunder?: A climate change protester in Melbourne during the height of the bushfires. Credit: Chris Hopkins

By April, the number of articles given prominence on the homepage of 12 leading news sites that mentioned climate change in their first 100 words had dropped to 32 from 562 in January, when the bushfire inferno was at its worst.

COVID-19 counted 13,256 slots last month alone."Certainly coronavirus has reached unprecedented levels of media saturation, being mentioned in 80 per cent of stories some days," Conal Hanna, a Streem media analyst, said.

Interestingly, a similar pattern is evident in the United Kingdom, where interest in climate change tracked at levels close to Australia's even though the bushfires had no direct impact other than drawing the media's attention.

Less than one per cent of articles now mention climate change
Percentage of articles published in leading newspapers and websites

Source: Streem

The surge in coronavirus articles in Australia is notable, with four times more articles on the pandemic than all climate change-related news in the past year, Streem data showed.

Previous periods of relatively active interest in climate-related news, such as the address to the United Nations by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, were similarly dwarfed by articles about COVID-19.

Climate change coverage in April was 0.36% that of coronavirus
There were four times more COVID-19 stories in April
than climate change stories in the past year

Source: Streem

Bushfires devastated much of the forests of eastern Australia and elsewhere during the summer of 2019-20. Credit: Rob Blakers.

Mr Hanna said that while the pandemic was always going to dominate Australia's media landscape, other topics have been gaining reader interest in recent weeks.

"The George Pell verdict, the release of Malcolm Turnbull's memoir and the ongoing discussion about football season resumptions are all topics that have generated considerable prominence in the media despite the pandemic," he said.

How COVID-19 redefined 'blanket coverage'
The percentage of print and online news stories mentioning each topic

Source: Streem

Links

• Media ‘impartiality’ on climate change is ethically misguided and downright dangerous
• Why is climate change still not top of the news agenda?
• In media coverage of climate change, where are the facts?
• How is global media reporting on the climate crisis?
• Reporter’s Toolbox: New Resources Help Improve Climate Coverage
• Annals of a Warming Planet: Welcome to The Climate Crisis Newsletter
• (AU) Media Watch Host Paul Barry Fans Flames, Dodges Climate Change Facts
• (AU) Media Watch: News Corp's Fire Fight
• 'Major blow' looms for top Sydney solar research unit as funds wither
• Scientific approach for COVID-19 must be applied to climate change

Climate Change Has Already Made Parts Of The World Too Hot For Humans

New Scientist - Adam Vaughan

Climate change is already making some places unliveable. AKHTAR SOOMRO/Reuters/PA Images

Global warming has already made parts of the world hotter than the human body can withstand, decades earlier than climate models expected this to happen.

Jacobabad in Pakistan and Ras al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates have both repeatedly crossed a deadly threshold for one or two hours at a time, an analysis of weather station data found.

Wet bulb temperature (TW) is a measure of heat and humidity, taken from a thermometer covered in a water-soaked cloth. Beyond a threshold of 35°C TW the body is unable to cool itself by sweating, but lower levels can still be deadly, as was seen in the 2003 European heatwave that killed thousands without passing 28°C TW.

A US-UK team analysed weather station data across the world, and found that the frequency of wet bulb temperatures exceeding temperatures between 27°C TW and 35°C TW had all doubled since 1979. Though 35°C TW is thought of as a key threshold, harm and even death is possible at lower temperatures, so the team included these in their analysis.

Most of the frequency increases were in the Persian gulf, India, Pakistan and south-west North America. But at Jacobabad and Ras al Khaimah, 35°C TW appears to have been passed, the first time the breach has been reported in scientific literature.

“The crossings of all of these thresholds imply greater risk to human health – we can say we are universally creeping close to this magic threshold of 35°C. The tantalising conclusion is it looks like, in some cases for a brief period of the day, we have exceeded this value,” says Tom Matthews at Loughborough University in the UK.

His team corroborated the threshold being breached by looking at another weather dataset, based on temperature and humidity observations and modelling. That analysis suggested several areas of the Persian Gulf will see the possibility of 35ۜ°C TW happening once every 30 years at around 2.3°C of global warming. The world has already warmed about 1°C due to human activities.

Such intense humid temperatures have so far largely affected affluent Gulf states, which have the capacity to cope by investing in air conditioning. But Matthews warns that with continued climate change, the extremes will affect more parts of Pakistan, and India too, which may have not have the capacity to adapt.

Even if they they could, it would require huge amounts of energy for cooling, further exacerbating climate if it came from fossil fuels. “We are already exquisitely close, closer than we thought, to that line in the sand,” he says.

While there are uncertainties over temperature and humidity readings from a few weather stations, because of where they are sited or how they are calibrated, Matthews says the overall picture is “unequivocal”.

Steven Sherwood at University of New South Wales in Australia, who was not involved in the research, says it makes a convincing case that the measurements are accurate, though it could not be guaranteed.

“The implications of this study are that such extreme conditions which push the tolerance of the human body are not as far off into the future as we thought, at least in a few locations on Earth,” he says.

Clare Heaviside at University College London says the work is broadly in line with existing research, but cautioned against the focus on the threshold of 35°C TW. “It is difficult to link a wet bulb temperature threshold to specific health outcomes, and for different population groups,” she says.

Links

• The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance
• Hot, sleepless nights will get more common with climate change
• It’s already getting too hot and humid in some places for humans to survive
• Unsurvivable Heat Was Predicted to Blast Earth in the Future. Instead, It's Happening Now.
• Potentially lethal heat waves are more common than scientists thought
• Heat and Humidity Are Already Reaching the Limits of Human Tolerance

Mark Carney: 'We Can't Self-Isolate From Climate Change'

BBC Science & Environment - Victoria Gill

Could a post-pandemic economic recovery provide countries with the chance to accelerate towards cleaner energy? Getty Images

The former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has added his voice to calls for industrialised nations to invest in a greener economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

He shared his comments in an online discussion about climate change with the former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcom Turnbull.

Both called on nations to accelerate a transition to cleaner energy.

The event was organised by the Policy Exchange think tank.

Mr Carney said that the pandemic was "a terrible situation, but there was also a big opportunity" at the end of it.

"We have a situation with climate change which will involve every country in the world and from which we can't self-isolate," he added.

Mr Carney has previously spoken out about climate change risks. Getty Images

Science confronts politics

As has rapidly become the socially distant norm, both participants joined the discussion via video conference from their respective homes - setting out how they saw ways in which countries could emerge from the crisis with cleaner, more sustainable economies.

Mr Turnbull, who was Australia's prime minister from 2015-2018, issued blunt, broad criticisms of many governments for failing to take the science of climate change seriously.

Drawing bleak parallels with the pandemic, Mr Turnbull said Covid-19 was a case of "biology confronting and shaking the complacency of day-to-day politics with a physical reality of sickness and death".

"The question is, when will the physics of climate change mug the complacency and denialism - just as biology has with respect to the virus."



'Leapfrog ahead'

Mr Carney, who stepped down as Bank of England governor in March, just before the UK lockdown began, explained that, at a time when many industries would have to restructure, this would be a chance "to try not go back to the status quo".

As countries re-launched and rebuilt their economies, they "should try to leapfrog ahead", he said.

He recommended regulatory policies that would push economies more quickly towards greener growth - and a more sustainable future - citing the UK's plan to phase out petrol and diesel cars by 2035.

Governments, he added, should also take the opportunity to invest in wind and solar power to accelerate the transition to greener energy.

Many countries would have the opportunity to invest in sustainable infrastructure, Mr Carney said, pointing out that that opportunity was missed after the 2008 financial crisis.

"You can't wish away the systemic risk," he said. "In the end, a small investment up front can save a tremendous cost down the road."


Five things the world needs to invest in to be "climate change resilient"

Links

• Pandemic Also A Reckoning For Climate Change, Turnbull Tells British Audience
• Can coronavirus crisis spur a green recovery?
• COVID-19 Is A Dress Rehearsal For Entrepreneurial Approaches To Climate Change
• (AU) Australian Businesses Call For Climate Crisis And Virus Economic Recovery To Be Tackled Together
• (AU) Australia Listened To The Experts On Coronavirus. It's Time We Heard Them On Climate Change
• IMF Leader Says Pandemic Stimulus Must Focus On Battling Climate Crisis
• Parallel Threats Of COVID-19, Climate Change, Require ‘Brave, Visionary And Collaborative Leadership’: UN Chief
• German Companies Call For COVID-19 Aid To Be Tied To Climate Action
• The Pandemic Could Be A Call To Action On Climate Change
• Climate change: 'Invest $1.8 trillion to adapt'