You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows…. Bob Dylan
(Part 1 of 2 on the reality of climate change. You can see Part 2 here.) You don’t need a weatherman to tell you that climate change is happening, although some weathermen will tell you if you ask. You can step outside. You can read about or experience the latest natural disasters. You can check a thermometer.
There are some folks (not too many) who mock the idea of the climate change on what they feel are the indisputable grounds that summer has always been hot.
This assertion is not as indisputable as they might think. There have been summers that were not so hot. See 1816 for example, often referred to as a year without a summer. In fact, up until the industrial era, the world was experiencing what has been referred to as a ‘Little Ice Age.’ A little ice age.
Climate change is always happening on this planet of ours.
It changes slowly or rapidly, and human fortunes have always been waxing and waning depending at least partly on those changes in climate.
The fact that the earth’s climate does change, regardless of whether there are humans around to goose those changes makes some feel that either a) humans can’t possibly be affecting today’s climate, and/or b) changes in climate are no big deal because the climate is always changing anyway.
As for idea a), everything affects the climate, not excluding people. Trees affect the climate, beavers affect the climate, and yeah people do too. If you don’t believe me, stand on some asphalt on a hot summer day. Take a look at the smog in Los Angeles. Read about the US Dust Bowl. Or London’s killer ‘pea-soup’ fog. Climate change is happening because people affect the climate.
But that’s not really the point. Whether people do or don’t affect the climate is not the point. And whether or not current climate changes are a big deal in terms of earth’s history aren’t really the point either.
The point is quite simply how people are going to live on the planet with the climate we’re in now. The planet has more or less accidentally coughed up a period of climate stability for the duration of human civilization. If that’s going away – then the prudent thing to do is to figure out how to live in today’s climate. Or, I guess, throw in the towel and scream ‘we’re all going to die!’
Dramatic, and perhaps even cathartic, as the screaming option might be, it’s probably not necessary.
What is necessary, though, is dealing with the current natural disasters in a changing climate.
In 2024, between January and mid-May, the United States alone has experienced more than 10 extreme weather disasters with costs of more than $1 billion each. In total, the disaster-related costs for that time period exceed $25 billion.
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) thinks the North Atlantic is staring down the barrel of up to 7 major hurricanes and north of 14 named storms. The WMO is not going too far out on a limb to forecast though, since the last 8 years have had above average hurricane seasons.
If climate change was not happening, an average hurricane season has 14 named storms and 3 major hurricanes. But at this point, saying ‘well, more than that this summer!’ is almost like saying ‘the dog’ll eat the turkey if you leave it unattended like that.’ Might not happen, but experience tells you that it probably will.
You don’t need a weatherman to tell you that if the last 8 years in a row have been above average, then things are changing! And quite frankly, it’s not too hard to tell which way the wind is blowing during a hurricane – because it’s blowing pretty hard!
In fact, the winds are blowing so hard these days (and no I’m not talking about politicians pontificating) that some scientists say we need a new category of mega-hurricanes. Super-hot ocean waters are leading to super-fast hurricane winds. It’s not exactly Sharknado – but then again, it kinda is. Put bluntly, the climate change that is happening is more exciting than anyone wants it to be!
So everyone knows that humans have to stop burning fossil fuels if humanity wants to avoid this kind of ridiculous horror movie shit. Even people who burn fossil fuels know this. Even people who produce fossil fuels know this. Even people who claim that climate change is not happening know this.
Knowing that humans have to stop burning fossil fuels is not the problem.
The problem is actually stopping the combustion of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are like chocolate chip cookies. People like chocolate chip cookies. If chocolate chip cookies are in front of them, people will eat chocolate chip cookies. People know that chocolate chip cookies are not particularly good for them.
Knowing is not the problem. Not eating chocolate chip cookies when they are in front of you and you like them is the problem.
Same with deforestation. People know that deforestation is not good. Forests good. Chopping them down not good. People don’t chop down forests because chopping down forests is a good thing and they don’t know any better. People chop down forests because they’re greedy or scared or poor or criminal or flat out immoral.
Meat consumption contributes to climate change too. Meat is another thing that people like. I even like it somewhat and I don’t like it all that much. Most people most of the time don’t want to totally give up meat and become vegan. Vegans think they should – for all kinds of reasons – but, as we noted in the examples above, should and want to are not the same thing.
On the other hand, there are things that can be done to mitigate climate change that people actually do want to do. People want to transition to renewable energy sources.
There are potentially gobs of money in the transition to renewable energy sources.
Transitioning to renewable energy sources can also save consumers gobs of money. For example, if you put solar panels on your house in a climate suitable for it, you can essentially reduce your energy bills to nada. People who do this love it! They loooooove it. They love it a lot.
People also want to increase energy efficiency. People, and businesses in particular, love efficiency. Including energy efficiency. Energy efficiency means savings. People loooooove savings!
So the problem is not that people don’t want to do anything to mitigate climate change. They do. The problem is that the folks who make way too much money from the climate-change-causing-system that has made them way too powerful do everything they can (and they can do a lot) to prevent people from doing what they want if what they want cuts into the excess profits made from frying humanity in a skillet of popping oil. Oil – get it – a skillet of frying oil. That is what what we’re in!
Earth Don’t Care
The thing is, the earth doesn’t care what happens to us. About 56 million years ago, give or take, the earth experienced something like a ‘methane burp’. Methane, you may remember, is a potent contributor to global warming today, and it warmed the planet right up back then. In fact, it warmed the planet by more than 9 degrees Fahrenheit. The result was massive extinction of creatures in both the land and seas. The earth doesn’t care if everything goes extinct!
The people who should care if creatures of the land and sea go extinct – are people! And here’s the thing. People are emitting carbon at a speedier clip than the methane burp did. Who knew that humans could accidentally compete with something as bizarre and frightening as a methane burp?!
What to Do When Climate Change is Happening Where You Live
Where you live impacts what sorts of climate changes and mitigation strategies you should be most concerned about. If you live on the West Coast of the United States, for example, (and many many people do), then you need to be thinking about fire suppression strategies as well as fire prevention strategies. (You might also want to think what kinds of punishment would be appropriate for PG&E.)
The year 2020 alone (what a terrible year that was) saw almost 20 billion dollars in damages from wildfires on the Pacific Coast of the US. Around the world, there are more wildfires now. This seems to be because temperatures are higher, precipitation in fire-prone areas is lower, and more people are starting more fires. It doesn’t help that more and more people are living closer and closer to fire-prone areas.
All these changes in the fire cycle are probably the result the climate change. But that doesn’t really matter as much as the fact that YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE! Or you can’t get it insured because if it hasn’t caught fire or been blown over by hurricane, it probably will before you die, so uh uh honey no compensation for you – you should have known this was going to happen.
What matters to you is that the people who make sooooooo much money from burning fossil fuels have shifted the risk for their actions from themselves to — you!
Click here for more on business and climate change – Part 2.
Discover more from Get Pretty Fed Up
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
As a side note, fire fighting is getting more difficult and more dangerous. Biden took small steps to improve the lot of federal fire fighters. But, as people in California know, not enough can be said about the bravery of the fire fighters who battle wildfires.