On September 12, 1962, John F. Kennedy spoke at Rice University in Houston. He said that the people there were gathered “at an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance,” and by the end of the decade, we would land a man on the moon. Today we are in similar times. But our challenge is managing ourselves in a human-changed climate.
Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have laid bare the costs of near-sighted action. Miami and Houston are deluvian doomscapes out of dystopian fiction. Today, Irma is approaching Tampa and St. Petersburg, blessedly reduced to a Category 1 hurricane. Our thoughts are with all of them.
But people, we have to talk about climate change. These juggernaut hurricanes were juiced by people burning fossil fuels. Our leading environmental scientists, engineers, business moguls, and economists recognize a pattern: a hotter world loads the dice for more intense and more expensive disasters. At a basic level, heat is energy. The more energy there is, the more violently the atmosphere can move. Think about it like a band playing a show.
Fifty years ago, girls went nuts when the Beatles played “Love me do.” But what happens if you add more energy? The music gets faster. It gets more distorted. The volume goes up. First it might be like “Revolution” but eventually it goes to 11. The songs become apocalyptic, something off of thrash metal records most of us would turn off. This is no joke.
I talked with author Seamus McGraw last week who’s been writing on climate for some times. He said Irma was only a Category 5 because we don’t have a Category 6. The 25 trillion gallons of water that fell from Harvey? These are humanity’s versions of those songs. But we can’t turn the volume down or the speakers off. They’re blaring.
Meteorologist Eric Holthaus recently said, “Harvey is what climate change looks like in a world that has decided, over and over, that it doesn’t want to take climate change seriously…Be wary of those that caution against ‘politicizing’ Harvey.” Irma too.
But the fossil fuel companies, astroturf campaigns, media-savvy liars, and predatory profiteers have sold doubt as their product. These dishonest salesmen have played scientist on TV and turned climate change into a partisan cancer.
This political tumor has crippled Americans from even seeing the issue for what it is. The World Economic Forum recognizes climate change as one of the top threats to the global economy. Security analysts and top brass from the U.S. military call it a threat multiplier that creates cascading risks. Insurance and reinsurance companies—the folks who insure the insurers—are marking it as a mega threat of escalating expense. And the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to two and a half minutes to midnight because we have failed to act on “humanity’s most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change.” And yet too many Republican leaders and their vulture donors are in the way.
For years, the merchants of doubt have spread disinformation about human-caused climate change. Exxon scientists knew their company was a major contributor to climate risks. But their leaders decided profiting in the near term trumped smart planning. They joined up with some PR pals and political allies like Joe Barton and Ted Cruz and they’ve been feeding the American public political poison ever since. In Florida, governor Rick Scott won’t let people in the government say “climate change.”
For whose advantage? Theirs.
At whose expense? Ask the poor and minority communities of the bathtub of the Gulf of Mexico, of New Orleans, of Houston, the communities living near leaking refineries, the first responders who entered a toxic stew of air- and water-born chemicals, the people looking for a good life in Florida.
At the same time, the big developers have just wanted to build, build, build. They’ve covered bayous and wetlands across the south with pavement to make a fast buck. They didn’t have to do it that way. True enough, Harvey would have overwhelmed even the smartest built city. But Houston’s sprawling concrete development has made a bad dream into a nightmare. Irma would have peeled the roofs off of houses and buildings and brought on a storm surge. But her power has been juiced by more heat.
But some leaders recognize what’s happening. Miami’s Republican Mayor Tomás Regalado said, “If this isn’t climate change, I don’t know what is.” He told the Miami Herald, “I don’t want to be political, but the fact of the matter is that this is a lesson that we need protection from nature. So, I think this is a lesson for the people to say you know what? We have to be prepared.”
He’s right. We do have to be prepared. We have to prepare by choosing a different path for energy and land development. That means we have to mitigate to reduce the impacts of future storms while we guard our people and land from these nightmare events. Combined, it calls for a renewable energy transformation—solar power could quickly transform Florida’s market—and low-impact development—that state is a natural sponge. Work with the creation instead of against it and it will require leaders who recognize our common perils and lead us.
JFK saw the “hour of change and challenge.” He also knew we could face them and we did. The United States sent people to the moon. Fifty-five years later, almost to the day, that spirit is still here even though some try to choke it out. Transforming our energy and development must be our new mission.
Peter Walks for Democracy 