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“For so long in studying climate change, we are studying the future,” says Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. “And now the future is here. So if we live here in Texas, we are seeing stronger and bigger and slower hurricanes with much more rain. If we live in the west, we are seeing natural wildfires burn hotter and an area major. If we live in the Midwest, the warmer temperatures are outpacing our rainstorms. “
But watching the Republican National Convention, if you didn’t know, you would never know.
“Joe Biden’s Democratic Party is pushing for this so-called ‘Green New Deal,'” Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst said in a prerecorded speech. She mocked Democrats’ efforts to legislate the climate crisis after referencing the Aug. 10 law that wrecked 10 million acres of her state. “If they were given power, they would essentially ban animal farming and eliminate gasoline-powered cars. It would destroy the agricultural industry not just here in Iowa but across the country.”
“How much does Camp Fire 2018 cost, just to fight? Just to put out the flames?” I asked Governor Newsom after fierce winds made the Camp Fire the most destructive wildfire in state history. “It’s amazing, the numbers, and they continue to increase,” Newsom responded. “Removal of debris alone is a multi-million dollar expense, not multi-million dollar.”
The second and third largest fires in state history are now burning at the same time and the windy season hasn’t even started. “People think, well, we can’t afford to tackle climate change,” Newsom says. “My God. The naivety of that. Because the most expensive option is to do nothing.”
“How was climate change so polarized politically?” Hayhoe asks. “It’s not the science, it’s the solutions. We have been told that the only solutions to climate change are negative or punitive. They involve destroying the economy, putting people out of work and letting the United Nations rule the world.”
Blurred by this message, she says Americans miss how much progress is happening between disasters. “They don’t know that 70% of the new electricity being installed in the world now is clean energy. They don’t know that solar plus storage is actually cheaper than natural gas in California. Or that Texas has more energy. Wind power installed than any other state in the country, or that Texas has the first carbon neutral airport in DFW, and Ft. Hood, the largest military base in the United States is powered entirely by wind and solar power. The reality is that the solutions are already here “.
But if Hayhoe sees the solutions, others see the pain along the way.
“It’s going to get worse before we get better,” says Lieutenant General Russel Honoré. “We have to find solutions to pollution that will boost the economy of the future.”
“Right after Katrina we had Rita. A journalist asked me: ‘We just had two hurricanes. Do you think that has something to do with global warming? ‘ And he was stunned. I gave him an intelligent answer, but it tormented me for days, “he says.
At the time, the Department of Defense was anxious about the threat of rising sea levels at bases across the country, but the question suddenly made the science personal, as Honoré watched his beloved swamp communities drown afterward. from the lack of official planning and imagination.
Fifteen years later, Honoré spends most of her hours thinking about solutions for the Gulf and the nation she served.
“We can start to fix our infrastructure. Let’s adjust the damage done, we create jobs that reduce the impact on the air, water and land. I think we have to have an adult conversation, regardless of the political class,” he said. .
Taking action is essential for people like Hayhoe.
“There is no right answer on how to fix climate change,” he says. “There is no silver bullet either. Just a bunch of silver pellets.
“But we are all accountable to our families, our loved ones, our children, the poor, the marginalized and the vulnerable right here where we live, as well as around the world for taking our heads out of the sand to recognize that the climate is changing. Human beings are responsible. The impacts are serious. And we can act now. It doesn’t matter who we are and how we vote. “
