Despite the temptation to make bold declarations about climate change based on our personal sweat output on a given day in July — or the fact that you burned the soles of your feet running to your beach towel on Sunday, when the sun was scorching — subjective prognostications obviously aren’t rational. We have to listen to the data and the scientists, and what science is telling us now is that the earth is getting hot as hell.
For more than a year now, global heat records have been exceeded with frightening regularity. June was the 13th month in a row in which a new maximum temperature was reached. Scientists describe a new normal in which heat waves are hotter, wildfires are more intense, and coral reefs die faster. And the warming trend may be accelerating: Researchers also say 2023 may indeed have been the hottest year in 100,000 years.
This is all rather mind-boggling, not least because modern humans developed as a species during a period in which climate fluctuations were more modest. Our species, our agriculture, our civilizations developed under conditions that we are now departing from, scientists say, due to our own voracious appetite to consume (consume the earth and its fuels, consume fast fashion and single-serve beverages in throwaway plastics, consume forests, jungles, and animal species).
Keeping average global temperature rise within the narrow band of 2 degrees Celsius, the target set in 2015 in Paris and confirmed by the nations gathered in Glasgow in 2022, will take forceful measures and courage from politicians. Last year’s average temperature was 1.48 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitor. The continued rise in greenhouse-gas emissions could add 4 degrees to the annual averages by the turn of the next century.
The climate crisis is a five-alarm fire, and solutions seem far off. We’ve all heard the drill — what we, as individuals, can do to help. But collectively, in this election year, even more critical is to support candidates for public office who grasp what’s happening and put climate change at the heart of their agenda.
Does your candidate for Congress or the Oval Office understand what’s at stake?
Like many of his Republican colleagues gathered in Milwaukee this week, our representative here in the First District, Nick LaLota, is fiddling while Rome burns. No one in Milwaukee this week is talking about carbon, trust us. The party platform actually says it out loud: “We will drill, baby, drill.” (Yes, that’s a quote.)
Representative LaLota is a member of the Conservative Climate Caucus, a group that, while purporting to be concerned with environmental policy, seems to have a primarily political raison d’être. “It’s good policy to want to find alternate energy sources which can make energy cheaper, which can decrease our reliance upon foreign nations, many of whom are hostile to us. That’s all good government,” Mr. LaLota told Politico. “If good politics flow from that, well, God bless. That’s the cherry on the sundae.”
Among the goals stated on the Conservative Climate Caucus’s website is to “fight against radical progressive climate proposals that would hurt our economy, American workers, and national security.” That’s what a poker player would call a major “tell” that the caucus’s main aim is to oppose any constructive climate action at all. Another came last week, when Mr. LaLota went on Facebook to criticize Democrats for being “anti-energy,” a phrase that, in the current Orwellian double-speak, is thrown at anyone who backs limits on drilling, wants to more strictly regulate emissions from heavy-duty vehicles, or enforce compliance with existing ozone regulations.
Outright climate denial may no longer be in fashion, even for conservative congressmen from Long Island, but membership in a caucus with the word “climate” in its name does not mean much if the caucus is doing diddly-squat. It’s on Mr. LaLota to put up or hush up. If he does not, it’s on us, the voters, to show him the door.