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Heat, grid failures and climate change raise stakes for disasters
The article ties rising greenhouse-driven warming to more frequent, more intense extreme weather, warning that a single catastrophe could overwhelm infrastructure and kill millions.
Insurance Journal frames extreme weather risk as moving from possibility to inevitability, warning that climate shocks could become more frequent and more severe.
The piece highlights an opening scenario from Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel “The Ministry for the Future,” where a heat wave combines with a breakdown of India’s electrical grid and kills 20 million people, illustrating how disaster cascades can unite nations toward climate action.
It notes that scientists have long warned that the world will experience more intense extreme weather events, and cites climate scientist Daniel Swain of the California Institute for Water Resources, who argues that people may dismiss warnings as exaggeration until impacts arrive.
The article also links warming to greenhouse gas levels, saying Earth is about 1.44 degrees Celsius warmer in 2025 than in the early 1800s, and argues that the resulting higher temperatures contribute to more frequent, more intense heat, storms, floods, and droughts.