In Houston, Texas, as temperatures soared into the high nineties, over a million people and tens of thousands of businesses lost electric power and air conditioning because of Hurricane Beryl. The hurricane swept across the West Indies, made landfall in Mexico and Texas, and then veered north and east delivering record floods to Vermont. This year was the earliest a hurricane of this intensity was ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean and the National Weather Service is forecasting a record setting hurricane season because of warming oceans.
In the first weeks of July more than 60 million Americans faced heat alerts as new high temperature records were set in the United States Southwest daily. In Death Valley, California, the temperature hit 127°F, breaking the old record by five degrees. Phoenix, Arizona had a record high of 118°F and in Palm Springs, California it was 124°F. In Las Vegas, Nevada temperatures topped 115°F each day for over a week.
In California, by the middle of July, even before the start of the peak fire season, there were more than 3,500 wildfires and tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes. The area scorched by flames was more than twenty times greater than during the same period in 2023. The largest fire at a national park near Santa Barbara burned more than 34,000 acres of forest in just a few days and threatened the Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch. In the past, fires were made worse because drought conditions dried out underbrush. This winter, California had plenty of rain. Plants did well but then dried out during the heat wave, so now there is a lot of fuel to burn.
In the Bronx near Yankee Stadium, the Third Avenue Bridge, a “swing bridge” across the Harlem River that connects the borough with Manhattan was stuck in an open position because of two days of extreme heat, in Central Park the temperature hit 95°F, caused joints to expand and lock. The Transportation and Fire Departments had to spray the bridge with river water to cool it down so the swing section would return to the closed position and the bridge could be reopened to traffic. The bridge was opened in 1956, 68 years ago, and a new swing span was installed in 2004, just twenty years ago. In New York and the United States, there is a lot of infrastructure that is significantly older and even more vulnerable to climate change.
2023 was the warmest year on record since accurate records started to be kept in 1850, eclipsing 2016, the previous record holder. Globally, it was 1.3°F warmer than the 1991-2020 average and 2.6°F warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level. Every month from June to December 2023 was warmer than the corresponding month in any previous year. July and August 2023 were the warmest two months ever recorded and June 2024 was warmer than any previous June. Climate scientists worry humanity is fast approaching a point where climate change will be irreversible with multiplying catastrophes.
While the climate catastrophe is already here, if Republican Party candidates are elected to office in November, expect conditions to rapidly worsen. The party platform mirrors Project 2025 proposals developed by the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing think tank. Project 2025 proposals include ending federal funding for the development of clean energy technology, closing offices at the Department of Energy that promote green energy alternatives, eliminating discussion of climate change responses at the National Security Council, and encouraging the increased production and use of fossil fuels.
