Last week, on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ida unleashed 150 mile-an-hour winds and slammed into New Orleans, super-fueled to huge size and rain-making power by the Gulf of Mexico whose temperatures are 3 to 5 degrees higher than the average just 30 years ago. In its wake, more than a million people in Louisiana and neighboring states have been left without water, power or air conditioning amid stifling hundred-degree heat. Then the remnants of Hurricane Ida delivered torrential rain and flooding in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York so intense it killed at least 40 people across the region while paralyzing New York City. Even before the Northeast flooding, economic costs from Ida were estimated to be $80 billion.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, another devastating year of fire fueled by climate change-exacerbated drought and high temperatures keeps getting worse. The massive Caldor fire, already more than 200,000 acres, has been roaring through the Lake Tahoe area, sending tens of thousands of citizens fleeing in chaos. Caldor was only the second fire in history to begin on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains and cross to the eastern side. Last year alone, five of the ten largest fires in California history occurred, burning over 4.2 million acres, killing 30 people, and shockingly becoming the new normal.
In August in Tennessee, massive flooding, caused by nearly 18 inches of rain in a single day as part of a storm made worse by climate change, killed more than 20 people.
“There is no place in the United States where you shouldn’t be resetting your expectations about Mother Nature disrupting your life,” said Roy Wright, president of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, in the wake of the Tennessee storm. “Climate change has come barging through the front doors of America.”
On the Colorado River, which provides water to 40 million Americans and seven Western states, and power to millions more, officials declared a first-ever emergency water shortage on the river. While many factors, including over-allocation of the Colorado River water from the beginning have contributed to this state of affairs, the ultimate cause pushing the river toward a breaking point is a new “mega-drought” exacerbated by climate change. Stunning record heat waves earlier this summer made life in the Pacific Northwest miserable for millions. Temperatures near 115 Fahrenheit were reached in Portland, Oregon, Washington State and British Columbia, all places that had never seen temperatures so high.
Globally, July was the hottest month in recorded history, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And in just the last few days, the World Meteorological Organization has issued a major report finding that the number of weather-related disasters to hit the world has increased five-fold over the past 50 years, causing millions of deaths. Reported losses in the decade between 2010-2019 were around $383 million per day, a seven-fold increase on the $49 million per day between 1970-1979.
One tragedy surrounding these deadly and devastating climate change impacts is that we have been warned it was coming — for decades. Scientists and activists in the late 1980s and early 1990s began to produce major reports detailing the near certainty of tremendously destructive climate change impacts hitting the U.S. and the world in coming years as temperatures warmed. These reports made headlines everywhere, so those in power knew about them.
Many Democrats publicly expressed the need to act on climate change, and offered legislation at the federal and state level. Yet while the ability of Democrats to pass needed legislation was hindered by some divisions within their own ranks, resistance came primarily from Republicans who overwhelmingly opposed any serious actions to limit climate change and the greenhouse gas emissions that cause it. With a few prominent exceptions like former Sen. John McCain, most Republicans derided climate concerns as alarmism and claimed any attempts to limit emissions would be devastating to the U.S. economy.
Fast forward 20 years, and our climate situation has grown immeasurably more grave. As predicted climate change impacts are inflicting huge human and economic costs in the U.S., with much worse to come without immediate action. Yet stunningly, our broken politics on climate change seem much the same as decades before.
Democrats, beginning with President Biden, are desperately pushing to enact hundreds of billions of dollars in climate change and clean energy measures later this month as part of a wider economic and budget bill. These actions cut can U.S. emissions by 50% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, and put the U.S. in a stronger position to force other nations to act in key climate negotiations in November.
But right now Republicans are unified in opposition to any but cursory climate actions. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the top Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, claimed the Biden climate measure was a “spree to impose this green new disaster on every American,” willfully ignoring the real climate disasters all around us that Biden’s legislation will help limit. This summer, every single Republican member of the key Senate Finance Committee voted against tax incentives for solar, wind, geothermal, electric vehicles and dozens of other clean energy sources.
The stakes of the climate crisis are far more profound and long-lasting than most leaders seem to recognize. What’s needed is a united, bipartisan front like that the U.S. created during the Cold War, in part to force other key nations like China to cut their emissions as aggressively as we do. An inkling that this may be possible is found in bipartisan support for recent legislation promoting American technology innovation to compete globally, and significant bipartisan support for infrastructure legislation.
But slow action to cut emissions won’t work. We must act decisively and quickly now in Congress this fall to create a clean energy future and cut emissions that are destabilizing our climate. Otherwise, we are consigning ourselves and all of those who come after us to a devastated and denuded world.
Bledsoe is the strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute and a professorial lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy. He served on the White House Climate Change Task Force under former President Bill Clinton.
