Category Archives: Climate

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Think now: what motivates a family to leave their home and undertake a journey of thousands of miles on foot to seek a better life? Answer: something really terrible.

Slowly, sleepily,  eyes blinking in the unaccustomed light, the mainstream media are awakening to the single most important fact of human life in 2021: the long-expected, long-predicted, long emergency whose name no right-wing politician must ever utter — global climate change — is no longer predicted, no longer expected, no longer in our future. It’s here.

During Thanksgiving week, two stories appeared at the same time in Politico, one of the pillars these days of Washington DC journalism; one of them was titled, “How ‘Climate Migrants’ are Roiling American Politics,” the other, “Don’t Call It Climate Change: Red States Prepare for ‘Extreme Weather.’” Continue reading →

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Delegates to COP26 appear to be working on the problem of climate change.

World leaders have given themselves over to the practice of APPEARING to do something about a problem rather than DOING something. They have done so with such enthusiasm, and for so long now, that they no longer seem to be aware that they are doing it.  The reasons are obvious: doing something is invariably expensive, and involves choosing between something and something else, which angers all the supporters of something else. USA is Number One in this practice, of course, but we have taught the rest of the world well. Almost everybody is doing it now, as illustrated wonderfully by the just completed COP26 United Nations conference on (not) dealing with climate change. 

Appointing a climate czar is not the same thing as fighting climate change. Having all the climate czars from all the countries in the world fly their private jets to Scotland to discuss reducing carbon emissions does nothing to reduce carbon emissions.  Continue reading →

Hurricane Ida slams into New Orleans on its way to New York City.

Hurricane Ida, it seems, may have accomplished what a half-century of accumulated scientific knowledge and pleading failed to do: crack the indifference toward climate change of the opinion leaders of this bloated, self-indulgent, low-information, self-congratulatory culture of ours. The spectacle of a vicious Category Four hurricane unleashing 170-mile-per hour wind gusts on New Orleans, southern Louisiana and Mississippi, then churning across the continent, dumping torrential rains and spinning off tornadoes to inflict similar damage and even worse mortality on New York City, New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania — well it got through to some of our talking heads. 

As I watched the television coverage I saw blood drain from the faces, and heard tremors in the voices of people who were awakening to the sheer magnitude of this unprecedented event, and its dreadful significance — that this which has never happened before is going to happen again. Frequently. The veneer slipped off more than a few news anchors’ beautiful faces, who virtually barked at their interviewees, “What are we going to do about this?!” Continue reading →

They lie as if bracketing a continent’s agony. They are among the first tombstones for an age that is being slowly but mercilessly swept from its place atop the civilized world by fire and water. 

In the North, a sprawling expanse of black ashes, where the village of Lytton, British Columbia, first had to endure a savage heat wave leading to the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada — 121 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the next day, June 30, virtually the entire village and its surrounding homes burned to the ground in a raging, 20,000-acre wildfire that, like the heatwave, was the spawn of global climate change. 1,000 people are homeless. 

In the South, on the water at Surfside, Florida, a pile of crumpled concrete that was a 12-story condominium building until in the early morning hours of June 24 it simply fell down, crushing its occupants. For decades there had been reports of rising sea water regularly — at every unusually high tide — infiltrating the lowest level of the parking garage to depths of two to four feet. For decades it had been known that the building was slowly sinking into the reclaimed wetlands on which it had been built. No one knows for sure what exactly brought it down, but the role of climate change will emerge as a major contributing cause.  (Exclamation point: a hurricane, one of the earliest ever in the season, is approaching Florida as this is written.) The death toll is expected to reach 150.

Someone should hold services over these tombs. Words should be said, and cut into granite. Pretty soon, there won’t be time.

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California wildfires like this one, unprecedented in number, extent and the length of their season, are only one small part of the onslaught of climate change now under way in America.

The heat wave that just relaxed its grip — slightly– on the Pacific Northwest was unprecedented in the history of the region, indeed of the entire United States. It came earlier in the year, set more all-time records, and set them by unprecedented margins of in some cases 20 to 30 degrees. That it has backed off for now means nothing, as Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state understands; this is climate change. “This,” he said on national TV, “is the beginning of a permanent emergency.”

Underground and surface water in the region are depleted; crops over much of the state are damaged or dead; human health has been affected by temperatures and humidity levels that are simply not survivable (in a region where air conditioning is regarded as unnecessary). Continue reading →

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It is quite likely that America has lost its first high-rise building to climate change and the resulting sea level rise. The collapse of South Champlain Towers in Miami Beach early Thursday morning is unprecedented in American history. Buildings under construction, or damaged by explosions or impacts, have collapsed, but never an untouched building on a quiet, cloudless night. When it Comes to Fire Protection, There Should Be Passive Protection As Well, that should be ensured by all the constructors before and after completing the given project.

The other thing that we have never seen in American history is the kind of assault now ongoing on Florida real estate by rising seas. The region is plagued by what the locals call “sunny day flooding,” incursions of flood water not from rain but from rising seas. Salt water is infiltrating the freshwater aquifers and poisoning coastal farm and garden fields. Continue reading →

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They were probably using the backhoe to build a sea wall. But at some point you have to give up.

In recent weeks, four — count them, four — major, reputable news organizations have run major stories on the beginning of the greatest disruption of American life that has ever occurred: climate migration. Attention: these stories all recognize not that this disruption is possible if we don’t do something soon, but that it has already begun.  Continue reading →

California’s Highway 1 is very scenic, very popular, but nevertheless is falling into the sea, a victim of climate change.

The term “coastal highway” is fast becoming an oxymoron in the age of global climate change — which, while we were distracted by Donald Trump denying that it was coming, has arrived. The triple threat of rising sea levels, intensified storms and, on the west coast at least, raging wildfires has made it increasingly difficult and expensive to keep seaside roads open.

California’s spectacular Highway 1, for example, whose 650 miles of breathtaking views are on bucket lists around the world and draw millions of tourists every year, is seldom completely open from one end to the other. The latest worst case scenario was a landslide of mud scoured from 125,000 acres of land burned over by a wildfire, by a record 16-inch rainfall, which wiped out 150 feet of the highway 165 miles south of San Francisco, closing a 23-mile stretch for months. Continue reading →

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California firefighters confront a threat that probably isn’t in their contracts — a fire tornado.

We’ve all been preoccupied of late with the pandemic, which has taken over our lives whether we catch it or not, and no wonder it has bedazzled us. Contrary to what you might have read in incoherent rants on Twitter, this is the worst public health emergency in modern  history, has precipitated the worst economic emergency since the Great Depression, is threatening to take down our health care system, our education system and the 2020 election, if not the whole country.

So don’t feel at all guilty about being preoccupied. But as a public service, I want to bring you up to date on what else has been happening all this time that we’ve been preoccupied, to reinforce the old adage: remember it always seems darkest just before it gets completely black.

California is burning in more ways than one. It’s on fire — as of yesterday, 92 wildfires were ravaging 200,000 acres across the state, having destroyed nearly 200 structures and having forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes despite fears of contracting the coronavirus in shelters. None of the fires was contained, and the state was able to field only 30 of its 77 firefighting crews, because the state prisoners who provide most of the manpower are sick with COVID-19. Conditions were so hot and dry near Lake Tahoe this week that fires there spawned fire tornadoes (for the first time in its history, the National Weather Service included the probability of fire tornadoes in its official forecast.) Continue reading →

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A house teeters on the edge of an eroding cliff in San Clemente, California. The sea will take this house, and thousands more, but we can’t talk about it.

The summer of 1942 was a special time in the modern history of the United States because for several months both coasts were under armed attack by hostile powers. German U-Boats were sinking Allied ships within sight of the Florida and Carolina coasts, wreckage and the bodies of dead sailors were constantly washing ashore. In June, Japanese forces invaded two islands in the Aleutian chain off the coast of Alaska, which they occupied for almost a year.

In the summer of 2019, both coasts of the United States are under attack by a hostile force far more formidable than Japan and Germany in the 1940s, one that is winning every pitched battle, while the leaders of the Federal government and of many states insist that the enemy does not exist. Continue reading →