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.
