Gary Griggs |Op-Ed
My primary goal is to inform and educate, rather than advocate. However, in the United States, we are currently two weeks away from what may be the most consequential election of our lives, and the outcome of our collective voting will have major impacts on all of us and the oceans in the years ahead…
The two devastating hurricanes that recently hit Florida and produced death and destruction across other southeast Atlantic states as well, were certainly aggravated and worsened by exceptionally warm water in the Gulf of Mexico.
On March 7, 2024, the Florida legislature passed a bill to eliminate climate change references from most existing state laws. This legislation deletes the words “climate change” in several bills and amends entire passages in others. The Florida governor and Congress members said that state energy policy must be “driven by affordability” and reliability and not a “climate ideology”. When did climate become an ideology? That’s like saying gravity and photosynthesis are ideologies.
North Carolina was once a climate leader, but more than a decade of Republican and corporate obstruction left the state ill-prepared for the historic disaster. In the years before Hurricane Helene ravaged North Carolina two weeks ago, the state’s Republican lawmakers and corporate interests continually fought climate adaptation and mitigation measures that could have helped communities withstand the storm’s tidal surge, hurricane-force winds, and widespread flooding.
The following three paragraphs are repeated from the Santa Cruz Sentinel of October 12, 2024.:
“Amidst these two epic storms, an historic election is underway, with one party spewing lies and disinformation about the cause of hurricanes and the deployment of disaster relief – lies that can take lives. NASA’s Earth Observatory stated that sea surface temperatures helped fuel rapid intensification…with winds increasing from 80 to 175 miles per hour in 24 hours. The World Weather Attribution project, researching links between climate and weather, reported “climate change is enhancing conditions conducive to the most powerful hurricanes like Helene, with more intense rainfall totals and wind speeds,” predicting that hurricanes will be more frequent – at least 1.5 times as likely – and stronger, as a result of human caused climate change.”
“While the science is clear, Republicans such as presidential candidate Donald Trump and Congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have been spreading lies with. alarming success, falsely claiming that the federal government is directing emergency response funds to immigrants, or in Greene’s case, claiming the government is actually controlling the weather to hurt red states.” I’m sorry Marjorie, we do not and cannot control the weather.
“David Wallace-Wells, a columnist with The New York Times said on Democracy Now, I think we’re entering into a really dark new phase in reckoning with the climate crisis. Many people are choosing to retreat into little cocoons of disinformation and paranoia”.
Climate change is all too real, and the impacts are surrounding us. We have been running a giant global experiment, except that there is no off switch or reverse gear, and we continue to put more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, further warming the atmosphere and ocean. In 2023, global carbon dioxide emissions reached a new record high (37.4 billion tons, a 1.1% increase from 2022). For the three largest emitters, China’s contribution rose by 4.0%, India’s rose 8.2% and U.S. emissions dropped 3.0%. Some modest good news – we are making progress.
However, the results of this election could change all of that with either a continued and increased emphasis on renewable energy development (primarily wind and solar), or a reversal and a push towards exploiting more oil, gas and coal, which are not renewable and that will accelerate the climate crisis we are experiencing, whether hotter drier summers with more droughts and fires, more concentrated winter rainfall with more landslides and flooding, more frequent and intense hurricanes, accelerating sea level rise, and the warming and increasing acidification of the ocean with all of the now recognized impacts on coral reefs, shell fish, and many other forms of marine life.
What kind of planet do we want to live on, and what kind of planet to we want our children and grandchildren to inherit and live on? We all have choices and we will live with the choices we make on November 4.
Katherine Hayhoe, a Distinguished Professor in Public Policy and Public Law and science communicator at Texas Tech University has stated that there are six stages of climate change denial:
“It’s not real. It’s not us. It’s not that bad. It’s too expensive to fix; Aha, here’s a great solution (that actually does nothing); and – oh no! Now it’s too late. You really should have warned us earlier”.
This article was previously published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on October 20, 2024, and has been lightly edited.
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Excerpt:
Second Trump term would restore climate denialism to an Oval Office efficiently dismantling protections . . .
The climate crisis may appear peripheral in the US presidential election but a victory for Donald Trump will, more than any other issue, have profound consequences for people around a rapidly heating world, experts have warned.
During his push for the White House, Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and “one of the great scams of all time” while vowing to delete spending on clean energy, abolish “insane” incentives for Americans to drive electric cars, scrap various environmental rules and unleash a “drill, baby, drill” wave of new oil and gas.
Such an agenda would be carried out over a four year-period that nearly rounds out a crucial decade in which scientists say the US, and the world, must slash planet-heating pollution in half to avoid disastrous climate breakdown.
Already, major emitters such as the US are lagging badly in commitments to cut emissions enough to avoid a 1.5C (2.7F) rise in global temperature above the pre-industrial era. With just over 1C in average warming so far, the world already has record heatwaves, a rash of wildfires, turbocharged hurricanes, plunging wildlife losses, a crumbling and increasingly green Antarctica, the looming collapse of the oceans and a faltering ability of forests, plants and soil to absorb carbon.
“We’ve got to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s hard to see that happening in the event of a Trump victory.” Mann added that “a second Trump presidency is game over for meaningful climate action this decade, and stabilizing warming below 1.5C probably becomes impossible”.
So what would a Trump election triumph mean for the environment?
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The Supreme Court Takes Sweeping Control Over Policymaking
from the Executive and Legislative Branches
Guest Opinion | Kim Steinhardt | 25 October 2024
Excerpt:
A recent, controversial Supreme Court decision sets off alarm bells for anyone interested in the emerging policies, programs, and plans intended to address the pressing problems of climate change and sea level rise, as well as other governmental action across a wide swath of American life.
In the case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the new conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old precedent and challenged the fundamental system of checks and balances between the three branches of government established by the U.S. Constitution.
What happened in this case, and why will it have such an impact?
The case might seem quite technical, an “inside baseball” kind of regulatory controversy without obvious widespread relevance – at first glance. By a six to three majority, the court invalidated a regulation adopted by the National Marine Fisheries Service that had assigned certain costs to be borne by the fishing industry for a Congressionally created fisheries monitoring program.
Whether or not one agrees or disagrees with the specifics of the cost framework for the monitoring program, the greatest significance of the decision lies not in the merits of the actual controversy between the parties…
Beaches | Coasts of the Month . . .
Photos of the Month . . .
“The arts was and continues to be a magnet for my mind and soul, and it was so obvious to me that life without the arts would just be flat,” – Oleg Guerrand-Hermès
Cultured (10-27-2023)
The Climate Stakes of the Harris-Trump election
– Grist Magazine | October 23, 2024
Excerpt:
From public health to public lands, here are 15 ways the next president could affect the climate and your life.
Helene and Milton, the two massive hurricanes that just swept into the country — killing hundreds of people, and leaving both devastation and rumblings of political upheaval in seven states — amounted to their own October surprise. Not that the storms led to some irredeemable gaffe or unveiled some salacious scandal. The surprise, really, may be that not even the hurricanes have pushed concerns about climate change more toward the center of the presidential campaign.
With early voting already underway and two weeks before Election Day, when voters will decide between Vice President Kamala Harris, who has called climate change an “existential threat,” and former President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” Grist’s editorial staff presents a climate-focused voter’s guide — a package of analyses and predictions about what the next four years may bring from the White House, depending on who wins….
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