We have all seen the devastation–in the same place twice in two weeks. One member of a mobile home community–who is thinking of just picking up stakes and leaving–said it best, “Planet earth is really messed up right now.” Home insurance has sky-rockted. People who don’t live anywhere near a hurricane still have difficulty getting it at all, much less getting it at a price they can afford. FEMA is beginning to be stretched thin. It is having to pull people from other agencies because it doesn’t have enough people with the right expertise to handle not only back-to-back hurricanes but a host of climate related disasters.
And, it is not as if we do not know it is climate related. Scientist after scientist, climate model after climate model, not only predicted this would happen but can show how it is happening now.
And it is not as if hurricanes are the only evidence. I live in Iowa, quintessential rural Midwest, a place that is not supposed to be hit hard by climate change. But climate change has reached here, too, far away from hurricanes. My state has some of the most fertile soils in the world–and no rain to go with them.
My mother is, in some sense, a climate refugee. When my family moved into my childhood home in the very early 80’s there were some issues with flooding. The entire neighborhood sat in a floodplain. A dyke had been built. Later a dam was added. But over time flooding became a yearly or several times a year occurrence. We were having once-in-50-year-events every other year. The historic floods of 2008 were the last straw in what had been a series of catastrophic floods. Flood insurance simply no longer made sense. FEMA bought everybody out. The houses were torn down and Mother Nature took back what was her’s. It’s a green space now. Ours wasn’t the only neighborhood in my home town to meet this fate.
We all need, the world over, to start facing economic facts. It is estimated that the two recent hurricanes will cost $100 billion. We can’t afford it. Certainly we cannot afford it every other week. Difficult decisions about who can keep their homes will have to be made. Consequences will be felt. We cannot continue to delude ourselves into believing that climate change will not change our lives.
And, yet, in the middle of one of the tightest elections in recent memory, climate change is still not front and center. Not even with the devastation of back to back hurricanes has climate change become a top issue. Not that other issues are not important–reproductive rights, the war in Ukraine, the Middle East conflict. But as significant as these issues are, none pose so much an existential threat to the world as a whole as climate change.
So where are the intense debates about what to do next? Where are the prizes for scientific innovations that could get us to net zero faster? Where is holding corporate America to account? Where are the demands for systemic change? All of these exist. But they aren’t the first thing the candidates are talking about. Why?
Denial is a funny thing. Certainly there is the out and out denial that we are all used to. When it comes to some people, It is hard to think of any facts that they will ever accept. They are too fundamentally oriented to reject science. But there is a different, more insidious kind of denial. A belief that, “Yes, climate change may be important, but it is not as important as the cost of groceries and gas.”
This kind of denial can be seen in Boston’s “Innovation District”, which is soon to be an “Inundation District.” Boston has put $20 billion into seaport districts located on land built from landfill to just above high tide in the 19th century. Despite repeated problems with historic tidal flooding and storm surges the development goes on. More and more people are raising their voices, trying to convince their local government to accept the reality of climate change. Still, the building continues without regard to sea level rise; even as many residents can see the effects of climate change directly in front of them on a daily basis.
There is really only one answer, and that is to convince people that global warming will raise the price of groceries and gas. When worldwide food shortages spur inflation and the stores have no oranges because of climate-related citrus greening disease; when the cost of gas goes up because oil refineries flood during hurricanes even though they were built outside the 100-year floodplain–governments will be able to insulate the public from the effects of climate change only so long. Only by allowing people to feel the effects of climate change in their everyday lives can we make true progress. Now is that moment for governments to tell their people to connect the dots, to tell them in stark terms how climate change will and is affecting them personally, and not to shield them from it. It is a matter of there being a leader who has the moral courage to step forward and say it. It is a matter of what it will take for climate change to really hit home.
Progressive Without Apology 