Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Think of this as the new face of homeland security: containing the damage to America’s seacoasts, forests, and other vulnerable areas caused by extreme weather events made all the more frequent and destructive thanks to climate change. This is a “war” that won’t have a name — not yet, not in the Trump era, but it will be no less real for that.
It’s not easy to hold the nation’s attention for long, but three solid weeks of record smashing hurricanes directly affecting multiple states and at least 20 million people will do it. Clustered disasters hold our attention in ways that singular events cannot – they open our minds to the possibility that these aren’t just accidents or natural phenomena to be painfully endured.
With daily headlines pivoting from the unparalleled flooding from Harvey in Houston to the devastation caused by Irma in Florida, it might seem like the United States has its hands full just dealing with our own climate emergencies. But meanwhile, multiply the damage from Harvey and Irma a hundredfold and you’ll get a feeling for the climate-related suffering taking place right now in the rest of the world.
Back-to-back hurricane catastrophes have plunged the United States into a state of national crisis. We’ve already seen one worst-case scenario in Texas: For the moment, Hurricane Harvey stands as the most costly natural disaster in U.S. history. And now there’s Irma, which has wreaked havoc across the entirety of Florida, America’s most vulnerable state. In just two weeks, the U.S. could rack up hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. Make no mistake: These storms weren’t natural.
As Houston begins its long recovery from Hurricane Harvey, epic wildfires burn throughout the western U.S., and Irma charges toward Florida after devastating several Caribbean islands, while two other storms build strength in the Atlantic basin, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is among those helping to expose the deadly consequences of climate change denialism by claiming threats posed by such global warming-related events are being exaggerated.
This July and August, the Heat Index (“feels like” temperature) seemed to climb into the “Danger” zone every day and stay there for hours, its peak often exceeding the forecast. Could we be approaching deadly weather already? What about other, even muggier parts of the planet?
Craig Russell’s Fragment succeeds on multiple fronts. On one level, it’s a fascinating work of idea-fiction that tells a tale of first contact between humans and whales. It also spins an absorbing thriller yarn in which a motley group of humans and a lone, heroic whale join forces to face an unprecedented threat. On a third level, the book offers important insights into the gravest ecological reality of our time, climate change, without ever coming across as didactic or preachy.
While U.S. centrism is a sad, frustrating reality of the world we live in, and something this very bulletin aims to counteract, we must also guard against false dichotomies and be wary of crocodile tears from people who would rather we remain isolated in our suffering than express true solidarity with each other as victims of a system hell bent on exploiting us and the nature around us. It is precisely at times like this that we must fall back on simple but profound notions like compassion, like camaraderie and solidarity, for we are all connected.
The Red Cross estimates that 14 million people have been affected by flooding in India; over 7 million in Bangladesh and 1.5 million in Nepal. The United Nations puts the total number of people affected by floods and lindslides at total nearly double that at 41 million.
The underlying reason for the uncertainty around talking about climate change is because the fossil fuel industry deliberately obscured this reality from the public for decades, and has a vested interest in limiting knowledge around the damage that their products cause. Muting discussion on climate change as a devastating storm unfolds is a political strategy that serves the interests of those who wish to delay meaningful action on climate change.
As the mercury rises, temperatures vary substantially on the basis of proximity to trees or water, the density and nature of built structures, the heat output of air conditioners, and many other factors. Heat mapping is an innovative, data-driven method to visualize temperatures across a geographic area in order to understand why some areas get hotter than others on summer days.
The evidence is mounting that we have entered a new regime of prolonged record-smashing extreme weather events thanks to our as-yet unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gas. But, as Francis, told ThinkProgress, that doesn’t mean we can attribute the stalling of Harvey to climate change and “near-record-low ice conditions in the Arctic’s Pacific sector” with certainty.
