The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the threat of a broader East-West conflict have drawn the world’s attention. Dangerously, the long-term issue of an impending climate catastrophe has been pushed off the front page. Meanwhile, because of the spike in fuel costs, there are calls for increased fossil fuel production at a time when there needs to be drastic reductions in fossil fuel use to stabilize the climate zones where most of the world’s population lives.
The same week in February as the most recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) detailed the increasing danger of climate change Republican Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa did not mention climate change once in her reply to President Biden’s State of the Union address. It was not a major theme in President Biden’s speech either. Republicans in Congress have consistently opposed legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to prepare the U.S. infrastructure for an ominous climate future.
Major American companies continue to be guilty of practices that will decimate the human environment. Microsoft claims to be committed to a “carbon negative” future, but between June 2020 and June 2021, its carbon emissions rose by over 20% because of the construction and operation of new data centers and the manufacture and use of its electronic devices.
The IPCC report, written by over 250 scientists from almost seventy countries, spells out how bad the approaching climate catastrophe will be. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres calls it “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” According to the report, climate change is happening more rapidly than expected with increasingly devastating results. The average global temperature has increased by 2° F since the start of the 19th century Industrial Revolution and the mass burning of fossil fuels.
Key findings include:
- In 2019 alone, storms, floods and extreme weather produced 13 million climate refugees in Asia and Africa.
- Millions of people are at risk of hunger and malnutrition as heat and drought kill crops and trees.
- Mosquitoes carrying diseases like malaria and dengue are spreading into new areas including in the United States
- Half the world’s population faces severe water scarcity at some point during the year.
- Heat waves killed hundred of people in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia.
- Floods devastate river valleys in Europe, China, and the United States.
- Wildfires rage out of control across much of the planet.
The New York metropolitan area will not be sparred. There will be longer, hotter and more frequent heat waves that will impact on both physical and mental health. Concrete and asphalt absorb and hold heat so daytime temperatures could rise by 7° F and night times will be up to 5° F warmer. According to the IPCC report, as sea levels rise 6 inches between 2020 and 2040, more and more neighborhoods in the city will be prone to flooding. Over 100 square miles of New York City, areas home to nearly a half-million people and 100 public schools, are under 6 feet above current high tides and especially vulnerable.
Presidents Obama and Biden pledged to take action to stop carbon dioxide emissions and limit global warming, but Donald Trump and the Republican Party blocked initiatives and now rightwing Republican appointees on the United States Supreme Court are in a position to cripple federal government climate action.
This term the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 rightwing majority including three Trump appointees, will rule on an anti-climate regulation case brought by 18 Republican state attorneys generals and the largest coal companies in the United States. The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is supported by 91 Republican members of Congress and powerful conservative groups including a group affiliated with the petro-chemical Koch family’s Americans for Prosperity Foundation. They want the court to rule that federal efforts to limit greenhouse gas pollution actually violate the 1970 Clean Air Act. They argue that enforcement of clean air regulations can only target individual power plants and cannot regulate the entire power industry. Coal-fueled power plants used to generate electricity are the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, trailing only truck, bus, airplane, and car pollution.
The federal regulations that are being challenged were never implemented, even as the global temperature continued to rise, because Republican elected officials kept them tied up in court. That the Supreme Court will review the case now suggests the ideological agenda of its rightwing majority. The court rarely takes up a case that involves a regulation that has never been put into effect because it is impossible to weigh its impact.
During preliminary proceedings, the rightwing cabal on the court asked rhetorical questions that exposed underlying contempt for science and human safety. Justice Alito, a Bush appointee, wondered whether climate change was really a threat to human civilization. Justice Barrett, a Trump appointee, suggested that responding to climate change wasn’t the proper role for the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
There are broader implications beyond climate and pollution if the Supreme Court rules to limit federal regulatory authority. Richard Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard, argues “If the court were to require the E.P.A. to have very specific, narrow direction to address greenhouse gases, as a practical matter it could be devastating for other agencies’ abilities to enact rules that safeguard the public health and welfare of the nation. It would restrict the enactment of regulations under any host of federal statutes — OSHA, the Clean Water Act, hazardous waste regulation. In theory it even could limit the Fed’s authority to set interest rates.”
Do you have children or expect to have children? Do you have grandchildren? Do you care about the country and the Earth’s future? If you voted for a Republican Party candidate, any Republican Party candidate, for any elective office in the last twenty years, no matter how moderate or reasonable they sounded, you voted to kill planet Earth. There may be enough time to reverse, or even just slow, the building climate catastrophe if immediate action is taken, but it may already be too late.
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Teaching Climate History: There is NO Planet B
Welcome to the Anthropocene. Teaching Global History: There is NO Planet B describes how since the start of the Industrial Revolution, human-caused climate change has impacted the globe with the burning of fossil fuels. It is an interdisciplinary book that offers an in-depth examination of the history of the Earth’s climate and how historians and citizens can influence contemporary climate debate and activism. Chapter topics include examining the Earth’s geological past, the impact of climate on human evolution, the impact of climate on earlier civilizations, climate activism, and the need for international cooperation. There are online teaching documents and questions including classroom activities and edited material for use in classrooms.