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Don't let latest news of record-breaking heat numb us into looking away or curling up in the corner [1]

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Date: 2023-10-03  

Back in 2015, which seems like ancient history in so many ways, I wrote Get used to it. You're going to see a lot more of this headline in your lifetime: Hottest year ever. Excerpt:

While Republican debaters seek ways to wipe off the stink of their global-warming denier labels and Republicans in Congress, state legislatures and the governors' mansions seek ways to undermine the Obama administration's modest but essential efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions, the tabulators of global warming stand aghast at what's happening far faster than most climate scientists expected. [...] Reports that last year was the hottest on record, this year is likely to surpass that record and next year is likely to be hotter still generates the kind of knowledge that leads some people to despair. Combining the heat reports with news about accelerating melting in the Antarctic, stalling oceanic currents, bigger swarms of Arctic mosquitoes, starving polar bears and hints there will be soon be climate-forced migration of hundreds of millions of people can turn the despair into desperation. And that can lead to paralysis or an attitude of eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we fry. The antidote for this is stepped-up activism dedicated to abandoning the fossil-fuel economy and speeding up the transformation of our energy system and the economic ideology that underpins it. This will take greater resolve at every level of government and commerce. The climate-change deniers and their cousins, the climate-policy delayers, are not going to take action on their own. And they aren't going to get the hell out of the way of those who are taking action unless we force the issue. As abolitionist Frederick Douglass would surely say if he were still with us, getting change requires making demands of those in power and replacing those who continue to resist and equivocate. Achieving that will take a relentless effort, both in electoral and street politics.

Unfortunately, that assessment hasn’t changed. Unfortunately, that 8-year-old headline is still true. Unfortunately, all too many people who are fiercely active on other issues turn a blind eye to this one.

x Here are monthly absolute temperatures (compared to anomalies). This September would not have been out of place as a typical July this decade in terms of global temperatures. pic.twitter.com/lKqTXMCmau — Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) October 3, 2023

At The Washington Post, Scott Dance reports:

Ever since James Hansen brought knowledge of global warming out of scientific papers and into the public eye with his congressional testimony 35 years ago, climate hawks have been told to be realistic and be patient.

But there are two realities: One is the razor-thin partisan margin in Congress that allows one senator to enable the dozens of outright climate science deniers elected to that body. The other reality comes from the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment of Climate that labels our current situation “code red for humanity.” Right now, funding efforts to prevent, adapt to, and ameliorate the impacts of climate change are running at just 4% as much as we fund the Pentagon. And even that is too much for congressional Republicans to stomach. Just one moronic measure they want to pass is slashing an extra $1 billion from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The Republican Party is in serious disarray and the long knives are unsheathed in their internal struggle. Consequently, over the 13 months, Democrats will have a solid opportunity just as we did in 2022 to replace a bunch of the 149 Republican climate science deniers in the House and Senate.

However, those replacements need to do more than merely tell us they accept climate science. We need to find out in the upcoming primary elections which ones really mean it. Because, I am very sorry to say, some of them don’t.

The Democratic primary candidates should each be asked to tell us what specific new legislation or other action to address the climate crisis they will initiate or support if elected. A generic I-believe-in-climate-science is far from enough. If they don’t have an answer to this question, they should be asked why the hell not. This effort shouldn’t just be focused on Congress. Democratic candidates in primaries for other political offices should be included. And, of course, we shouldn’t just ask Democrats in primaries. We ought to know, with specificity, where Democratic incumbents and challengers of Republican incumbents stand on this existential matter. Local activism is essential. One reason we’re in such trouble politically is that we Democrats have not paid enough attention to state legislatures (and state offices other than governors). David Pepper’s excellent 2021 book—Laboratories of Autocracy: A Wake-Up Call from Behind the Lines—addresses this failure.

The climate crisis must be dealt with politically on multiple fronts. Throwing climate deniers out of office is, of course, crucial. And it has the benefit of getting rid of Republicans who are bad on a whole range of other issues of importance. But dumping them is only a piece of what needs to be done. Much more attention needs also should be focused on bringing corporations to heel on greenhouse gas emissions. Recent history indicates that getting where we need to go on this front will take non-violent direct action that goes beyond many activists’ comfort zone. But the heatwaves and other impacts from the climate crisis is already doing that.

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