A weekly reckoning with life in a warming world—and the fight to save it |
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Climate protesters marched to the White House last year in Washington, D.C. Kevin Dietsch/Getty |
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I wake up every morning stunned at how many people feel no particular sense of urgency over the climate crisis. But in the past few years, I’ve found the summers particularly jarring. Last year, the Pacific “heat dome” killed hundreds of humans, as well as an estimated billion marine animals, off Canada’s coast. The remnants of Hurricane Ida drowned 11 New Yorkers in their homes. And here in the nation’s capital, which is not exactly twister central, not one but two tornadoes touched down last July—with zero effect on the 117th Congress, which has yet to pass serious climate legislation. This summer—which hasn’t even officially started yet—has already been rife with dangerous, record-breaking heat waves. As of today, The New York Times reports, almost a third of the U.S. population is now facing heat-related warnings and advisories. What summers exactly are people in power experiencing, what news are they reading, such that they don’t wake up every morning desperate to stop this now rather than later?
Liza Featherstone tackles this disconnect in a piece published today. “The climate crisis is already here,” she writes. We’re accustomed to thinking of it as a threatening force on the horizon, jeopardizing the next generation. But that’s no longer true. And continuing to talk about climate change as a future problem plays into the hands of a potent new force in climate obstruction: delay.
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Liza reviews a recent report published by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, CASM Technology, and the Climate Action Against Disinformation Alliance. The report argues that climate denial has been replaced by the “discourse of delay”—in other words, people saying that we don’t need to act immediately or radically to reduce emissions, that other policies are more important, or that serious climate policy will hurt more than it helps. Those with a vested interest in preserving profitable emissions, of course, have a track record of saying and paying just about anything to prevent climate legislation. But, Liza notes, “the delayists are cleverly exploiting the weakness in climate discourse: the movement’s tendency—perhaps born of privilege or perhaps its own form of neurotic denial—to speak of climate change as a dramatic nightmare that hasn’t yet arrived.” Whether as a first step in pushing back against climate delay, or merely as a personal way of affirming reality in these dizzying days, those concerned about the climate would do well to start using present tense, Liza argues. “When we make climate a problem of the future,” she writes, “we play into the hands of the climate delayists, who at this point are more dangerous than the climate denialists. The future, an uncertain place that is always difficult to imagine, is exactly where the fossil fuel industry wants climate advocacy to dwell. That’s because the future is never now.” —Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor |
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Our writers and editors are bringing you vital reporting, explanation, and analysis to understand the current climate crisis—but they need your help. |
—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor |
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Wind and solar energy generated almost 40 percent of the record-breaking energy draw on the Texas power grid this weekend, with Texans cranking up their air conditioners as temperatures soared in a dangerous heat wave. “Frankly, renewables are bailing us out,” energy expert Michael Webber told CNN. |
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That’s the stunning estimate of the leak rate of methane from an underground coal mine in south-central Russia. Methane leaks are coming under greater scrutiny as preventing them is an obvious way to reduce climate-damaging emissions, particularly given that methane is, at least in the short term, vastly more potent than carbon dioxide. |
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Elsewhere in the Ecosystem |
Not everyone’s going to agree with frequent TNR contributor Jake Bittle’s assessment of leftist climate politics for The Drift. But a lot of people will be talking about it. Jake reviews the development of the Green New Deal approach to climate policy on the left. Democratic socialist thinking has commonly held, he writes, that curbing emissions is so fundamentally incompatible with profit motives that no capitalist system will ever be able to generate the profound change needed to keep the planet livable. But with climate policy stalled and the midterms fast approaching, Jake asks whether it might be time for the left to adopt a less all-or-nothing approach—and whether it’s possible to do so without giving up on the fight: |
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The green revolution has not arrived. That’s not to say it couldn’t have, just that it didn’t: the left failed to win the battle for control of the Democratic Party, and the political sea change that would have been required to enact a Green New Deal has not materialized. A series of nightmarish climate disasters and a barrage of apocalyptic reports have indeed raised public awareness of the crisis—far more voters now call it a critical issue. But in all probability, it will be another decade before the Democratic Party regains the control it is bound to lose in the coming midterm elections. By then, we may have already passed the consensus deadline for decarbonizing the energy sector and halving domestic emissions. We don’t have that long to wait.… Financiers and corporate leaders now acknowledge not just the reality of the climate crisis but the extent to which the crisis threatens profit and economic growth, and the most influential private actors are even now making an effort—stuttering, shambolic, hypocritical, and self-contradictory, but an effort nonetheless—to transition toward clean energy and curtail the use of the dirtiest fuels.… This kind of piecemeal progress presents a profound challenge for the contemporary left: if we can’t shepherd the transition ourselves, can we nevertheless manage to shape this new green capitalism into something less deadly, and maybe even more just? And to what extent should we suspend our political principles to take action on a problem that admits no delay? |
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What Subscribers Are Reading |
Smaller, cash-strapped countries are losing patience with America’s dithering on climate finance. |
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Think tank wonks from the American Enterprise Institute to the Brookings Institution routinely weigh in on high gas prices and the war in Ukraine. Fossil fuel companies give regularly to those think tanks. |
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