As the earth burns
MIAMI – The month that just ended, July 2018, may be the hottest on record. In the past 30 days, there have been 3,092 new daily high temperatures, 159 new monthly heat records and 55 all-time highs worldwide, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In the U.S. alone, there have been 1,542 new daily high temperatures, 85 new monthly heat records and 23 all-time highs, with Texas, New Mexico and Louisiana leading the way. Canada, the United Kingdom, the Scandinavian countries, Japan and northern Africa are just some of the places that have experienced unprecedented heat. Ouargla, Algeria, experienced the hottest reliably measured temperature ever in Africa at 124.3 on July 5.
Already, the current global heat wave has contributed to countless excess deaths in the United States and the rest of the world. As always, the poor, the elderly, and people in the developing world are suffering most. But the populations of rich countries are suffering too.
Many people in the United States cannot afford air conditioning, and some of them are dying as a result. In the United Kingdom, few people have air conditioning, and houses are built not to circulate air but to keep heat in. There have been dozens of heat-related deaths in Canada over the last two months. High temperatures are blamed for the death of ten people in Korea.
None of this comes as a surprise. For a long time, we have been forewarned that something like this was coming. That’s why the entire world signed the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump walked away from it. The accord could not have forestalled what is happening now. Centuries of fouling the atmosphere means global warming has tremendous momentum. But it was a start, an international effort to limit the damage.
With the United States, the per capita champion greenhouse gas emitter, doing all it can to torpedo the objectives of the Paris Accord, the trend toward a hotter world can only accelerate. The stubborn resistance of the administration, Republicans in Congress, and the corporate interests that benefit from burning coal, oil, and natural gas have consequences not just for America but for the entire planet and its people. It amounts to nothing less than a crime against humanity.
It’s also a crime against the American people. In California, unrelenting high temperatures have been one of the main factors contributing to the deadly fires that are continuing to burn through everything in their path, including homes and people.
You might think this global climate disaster would have finally convinced denialists on the right that global warming is real and lead to a change in the Trump administration fossil fuels first policy. Not a chance.
In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency is getting ready to roll back tough fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks set during the Obama administration. Amid this hellish summer, the EPA can’t think of anything better to do than allow vehicles to emit more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, for the sake of automakers’ bottom line.
The current climate calamity is only the prelude. Although Americans are sweltering under the heat, the big picture and our country’s role in it mainly fly under the radar. The Trump administration, with its myriad outrages, constantly produces high levels of turbulence. It’s hard for citizens and the media to focus on a phenomenon that will take centuries to fully play out amid the horrors that are happening right now—the ripping apart of immigrant families, the caging of children, the war on the remaining threads of the social safety net, the threat of yet another tax cut, this one exclusively for the ultra-rich, and the mother of all scandals, the Trump-Russia connection. All this creates great suffering, yet it will eventually pass. The damage to the climate, the air, and the water will endure.
We are living in interesting times; the Chinese wisely warn us to beware of interesting times. It’s not boring when you have a president that is as unpredictable as a ball on a roulette wheel. Yet it is not exciting either. It is maddening, frustrating, anxiety-provoking. Cruelty and selfishness are the only two constants of this political regime, so what is consistent is worse than what is random. Ultimately, even the craziness becomes boring.
Resistance in every way that is ethical and productive is the best antidote for the despair that threatens to engulf us. The folks that preach and practice zero tolerance should not expect us to turn the other cheek but to get in their faces. The scoundrels who prey on the most vulnerable in our society should not expect to go about their daily lives in peace and serenity. We refuse to take on the ugly face of our tormentors but we won’t sit still and silent while abuse and injustice is visited upon our brothers and sisters.
