Climate-Driven Extreme Events and the Supply Chain
Climate-related issues, such as El Niño weather events and falling water levels in major waterways, are creating problems for global shipping.
My father was the son of an Idaho farmer. And while he left the farm to help run universities as a profession, one thing that did not leave him was the need to track the weather. He was a man concerned with the weather. He carefully tracked it in each of the cities where his five children lived, and then cities where the grandkids lived. With his large family spread out across the globe, my father had a lot of weather to watch. He was not mistaken in his concern. Today, as we track air quality caused by wildfires in Canada, watch the impact of a rare tropical storm hit Southern California, or see the devastation caused by wildfires in Maui, we are all turning into global weather trackers. If we are not tracking the weather, maybe we should.
In a recently published article by CNBC, reporter Sam Meredith outlined the ways that increasing climate-driven extreme weather events are impacting global shipping routes. There is additional worry that El Niño conditions have the potential to make the situation even worse. According to some estimates, between 80 to 90 percent of goods traded in the world are transported by sea, and disruptions, either by political entities or by natural conditions, can cause serious problems for business.