I remember learning about environmental issues when I was a high school kid. I had a wonderful teacher who helped a group of us learn about overpopulation, pollution from coal fired power plants, and pollution from cars. She changed my life, setting me on a path of near-total-focus on the environment. These days, I wish I was less tuned in. I wish I were like most Americans – disinterested in climate change, the oceans, our national parks, plastics, and urban pollution.
Look at the paired news events this week. On one hand we have the midterm elections reaching a screaming pitch, as candidates try to pull voters toward their preferred list of issues, republicans crime, democrats abortion. Notice that republicans never mention climate change and that democrats only talk about it as a second-tier issue. In the West, republicans talk about revitalizing the “energy” industry, meaning oil. Implicit is this pitch is pure climate denial.
On the other, we have several United Nations organizations announcing that humanity has now failed to keep greenhouse gases emissions at a point where we can hold global heating at 1.5 degrees Celsius. In fact, they say we will struggle to achieve even 2.5 degrees before 2030 without a “societal change.” Americans seem disinterested in this news. It hasn’t broken through and I doubt it ever will.
After all, there are problems with the global warming issue in terms of the American electorate. First it is an issue that many believe reflects on the future, and American politics is decidedly focused on the short term. The issue is also somewhat technical…. somehow our air pollution that we all produce to keep functioning, is ruining the climate, whatever the climate is. Then we have the United Nations telling us about this. The UN is an abstraction for many people, and conservatives are sometimes openly hostile to it.
Republicans and the Crisis of Our Times
Then we are back to the republican party whose policy center remains Donald Trump. Trump dismissed climate change long ago for two reasons. First it doesn’t involve him or allow him to take center stage on the issue so it must be discarded. Second, since it is a science-oriented issue, he converted it into an element of the culture wars. Remember Dr. Fauci and Trump? The pandemic didn’t serve Trump’s self-obsession either. Science is practiced by university educated intellectuals who don’t focus on politics primarily and whose loyalty is to facts and process. They are disloyal to Trump. They are not working-class republicans. Thus, they are on the enemy list in the culture wars.
This is not a trivial matter. We have a major political party in the US that is captive to the fossil fuel industry and has decided to take a hostile stance toward renewable energy. Their leader tells party members to dismiss climate change (and any number of other issues) and focus on him instead. Trump recruits candidates around the country who want to share his view to get his endorsement. We’ll see how they do in the midterms.
This is not to say that democrats are not captive to the oil industry also. But at least they take actions to move beyond filthy fuels and create a new economy based on clean energy. They have even achieved huge gains here, all with zero republican support.
Politics and fealty to Donald Trump and his millions of rally-goers makes the climate issue and renewable energy radioactive for republicans. They cannot risk crossing the lines of the culture wars, so useful for Donald Trump in his efforts to divide and conquer the American public.
Do you get the detachment from reality here? Hurricane Ian destroyed a wide swath of Florida. It will happen again. Should Florida bother rebuilding? Ian didn’t hit Mar a Lago so Trump may not have noticed. It didn’t concern him. For Trump everything must be focused on him. He must be the center of attention. His narcissism is so extreme that he is twisting the republican party into an organization that must worship Trump. Sadly, it appears most republicans don’t even see this. It doesn’t bother them, so fearful are they of the public Trump fan-club, and the people who pay so little attention to national affairs that they see Trump as a legitimate leader and a person loyal to the United States even after January 6th.
Back in Reality Land
Meanwhile, back in reality land, we have work to do. If we are going to address climate change, we have to rapidly transform our energy sector to renewable energy and probably some nuclear energy as well. We must shut down all the coal plants, and in short order shut down all the natural gas power plants too. That will be a tall order. Jobs will be lost.
We must create enough electricity with these tools to power not only our buildings but all of our transportation which must be electrified rapidly. This will be extremely difficult since a large swath of the American economy is tied to the internal combustion engine, its sales, its maintenance, and its parts. Millions of people make their living fixing cars and trucks. Electric cars and trucks don’t need much maintenance.
Meanwhile Russia has no interest in this matter at all. China is working on it harder than we are. India… not so much. This would all be a very interesting policy and international problem except we don’t have much time. We need to be unified and working rapidly toward self-preservation. Instead, we are distracted by a narcissist and a conservative movement that rationalizes everything over to their basically irrelevant points of view.
The midterms speak volumes about our future. Climate change is a tertiary issue in the election at a time when it is a full-on international emergency such that the world has never seen before. Hurricanes, forest fires, flooding all over the world. Species extinction, desertification, crop failures, more storms, overpopulation, thousands of people dying in the heat in the developed world… all of these are getting worse, not better. Our nation will be bankrupted by disasters. The third world already is.
America’s attention is elsewhere. But like aging and disease, climate change is right on top of us at every moment. Like death, it cannot be shaken off or dismissed. Denial will only make it worse.
- Tom Ribe
