A weekly reckoning with life in a warming world—and the fight to save it |
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The remnants of Hurricane Ida hit Brooklyn. | Ed Jones/AFP/Getty |
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It’s hard to imagine a weirder, bleaker back-to-school season. The relief many parents and kids feel at finally resuming in-person classes after over a year of agonizing remote learning is now counterbalanced by terror that the kids won’t be adequately protected from new Covid-19 variants like delta, which seem more likely to infect children than earlier strains. Kids returning to school will be asked to learn and grow in the service of their future selves. But that’s a tough message to transmit right now, when the future seems increasingly risky. The Washington Post reported this week that nearly one in three Americans experienced climate change–fueled weather disasters this summer. That’s not counting the 64 percent who “live in places that experienced a multiday heat wave—phenomena that are not officially deemed disasters but are considered the most dangerous form of extreme weather.” |
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Last week alone saw Hurricane Ida rip into the Louisiana Coast, spark three tornadoes in Maryland, and flood significant areas of New York, even after it had been downgraded to a tropical depression. Meanwhile, vacationers and year-round residents were fleeing legendarily balmy Lake Tahoe thanks to an approaching wildfire. President Biden on Tuesday emphasized the climate link between these crises, calling global warming “an existential threat” that makes the bipartisan infrastructure package, which includes funding for climate resilience efforts, all the more urgent. As many climate reporters, including The New Republic’s own Kate Aronoff, have pointed out, however, the package on its own is dangerously insufficient to meet the scale of the climate crisis. Whether the recent spate of disasters will inspire more ambitious policies remains to be seen. This morning, the Biden administration announced a target of having 45 percent of the country’s electricity come from solar power by 2050 but offered scant details on how exactly it was going to make that happen. What a truly bewildering time to be a kid—or a parent or teacher, for that matter. Aaron Regunberg penned a beautiful essay last week on this topic for TNR, as he wondered whether his five-month-old son would ever get to chase butterflies as he once did. |
The fight my son has been drafted into by the timing of his birth is a battle not only for survival and stability but also to keep our world from becoming a poorer, darker, lonelier place. It’s a struggle to save the richness and brilliance that make this planet the most dazzling, magnificent speck that, as far as we know, exists in all the vast entirety of our universe. Engaging in that work, I am starting to see, cannot mean anything but embracing all of that splendor—no matter how much of it may be lost in the end. |
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Check out Aaron’s essay if you or someone you know is having back-to-school angst. It’s a thought-provoking read. —Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor |
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Researchers at MIT have developed a fancy new magnet that could pave the way for commercial fusion energy. Energy experts think that once the technology to harness it is developed, fusion could be a relatively inexpensive zero-carbon way to generate a large amount of electricity. |
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California’s grid operator is asking residents to reduce power consumption. The grid can’t handle the likely increase in air conditioning demand from what are already above-normal temperatures for September. (Imagine what that’s going to look like if global warming proceeds unchecked.) |
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| Elsewhere in the Ecosystem |
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The Boston Globe’s Sabrina Shankman reports this week that leaving utility companies in charge of Massachusetts’s switch to green energy (called Mass Save) seems to be hampering the state’s ability to meet its climate targets: |
| Buildings in Massachusetts account for nearly one third of the state’s emissions, and a key part of the climate plan is to switch them from fossil fuels to electricity, while also acquiring enough clean energy to power the electrical grid. The state’s own plan calls for 1 million homes to be converted by a critical and fast-approaching deadline of 2030. However, the Globe reported last month that a review of data showed Mass Save and other programs are converting homes at a rate of just hundreds a year. In some cases, homeowners said Mass Save appeared to be discouraging them from switching to all electric systems. Barrett and fellow legislators who played key roles in crafting the state’s climate rules are now proposing bills to wrest control of Mass Save from the utilities and give it to either state agencies or other organizations that have a clear mandate to embrace clean energy and achieve the state’s climate goals. |
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