The tragic, horrific, almost apocalyptic wildfires raging now in California embody, like the migrant crisis in Europe, both a preview of coming climate change attractions and a clarion wake up call. Or at least they should be a clarion wake up call.
I am aware that now is not the time to get nasty and political. Americans are suffering. There’s a state of emergency. On the other hand, perhaps this is precisely the time to point out the folly, recklessness, and campaign cash-fueled cupidity of climate change denial on the Republican side of the aisle.
The cognitive dissonance between what is happening in Alaska, Washington and California and the continued GOP inability to be even vaguely serious and grown up about climate change is – I’m grasping for a word here. Dispiriting? Disheartening? Horrifying? Hilarious? Terrifying? Infuriating? Exasperating? Galling? Vexatious?
It beggars the imagination that scenes straight out of the Inferno – together with solid science saying that yes, climate change is involved in the worsening fire seasons – doesn’t flip the switch for more Republicans. Fifty six percent of GOP Reps and Senators in Congress are climate change deniers.
Here’s a small sample of the malarkey they are spewing. Note, too, these leading intellectual lights are all from the great state of California.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA-50): “There is climate change. Is there human-caused climate change? I don’t buy that.” [Times of San Diego, 9/26/14]
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA-49): “One of the difficulties in examining the issue of the climate change and greenhouse gases is that there is a wide range of scientific opinion on this issue and the science community does not agree to the extent of the problem or the critical threshold of when this problem is truly catastrophic.” [Project Vote Smart Issue Position, 1/1/12]
Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA-01): “The climate of the globe has been fluctuating since God created it.” [Redding Record, 9/24/14]
On one level – the level where people are being evacuated and burned out of their homes and losing everything – it doesn’t really matter what the GOP think. Screw ‘em. Let them stick their stubborn, greedy, pointy little heads in the sand. Just step out of the way of the fire fighters and rescue crews and emergency workers and FEMA money, gents and ladies.
On another more important level, it matters a LOT, because we are getting very short on time to do anything to avert catastrophic climate change.
In fact, according to this Stephen Leahy piece in The Leap:
In only three years there will be enough fossil fuel-burning stuff—cars, homes, factories, power plants, etc.—built to blow through our carbon budget for a 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise. Never mind staying below a safer, saner 1.5°C of global warming. The relentless laws of physics have given us a hard, non-negotiable deadline, making G7 statements about a fossil fuel-phase out by 2100 or a weak deal at the UN climate talks in Paris irrelevant.
So yes, it matters a lot that we have unserious, willfully pig-ignorant climate change deniers in Congress, because they, alas, have power.
One can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that among the folks who will be clamoring for FEMA to replace homes destroyed in the fires will be Republicans. Republicans in favor of small government, low taxes, and minimal regulations. Republicans who do not believe in climate change, think the EPA should be disbanded, and question President Obama’s citizenship. Republicans who demonize the federal government unless it’s doing something for them, and then fail to recognize or acknowledge that the largesse they do not want to relinquish is, in fact, from the government.
In other words, the “get your government hands off my Medicaid” crowd are among those affected by this summer’s catastrophic wildfire season – and they are also among the Republicans who voted in the current crop of congressional deniers.
Just because someone is irritatingly obtuse and willfully (or just plain) ignorant does not mean they are undeserving of sympathy. My heart goes out to every wildfire victim. It is heartbreaking to think of the loss and pain and grief and terror they must be experiencing.
The LA Times reported yesterday that, as of Tuesday at 6:45am,
the Valley fire had gobbled up 67,000 acres, displaced 13,000 people, destroyed 585 homes, and injured 4 firefighters. There was one death.
As of the same time the Butte fire had burned 71,660 acres, displaced 10,000 people, and required the evacuation of 6,000 homes.
The sheer overwhelming volume of human agony contained embodied in those statistics can’t fail to touch everyone’s heart. This is not “blame the victim” time.
But. But, but, but. It is overwhelming exasperating and excruciating to realize that, in order to get rid of the climate change denying members of Congress standing in the way of change, and to vote into the White House a Democrat with climate change at the core of his or her political platform, we need to convince an increasingly poorly educated and science-illiterate American electorate that humans are causing climate change, that it is here already, and that yes, it IS an imminent danger to not just “The World” writ large (with all the scary, poor, brown, foreign people in it) – but to red blooded, patriotic, God-fearing Americans.
I have confidence that America will elect a Democrat as President in 2016. But how will that person have the political will to act immediately, with vigor and vision, if they are both slogging uphill against a GOP tide of obtuse opposition, and are not being compelled by the American people to keep climate change on the front burner?
Americans continue to “disbelieve” in climate change. And Americans continue to elect candidates who “disbelieve” it, too, whether because they are truly that unlettered, or because they are handsomely paid to look the other way.
If climate change activists and communicators can’t seize on the tragedy of the current wildfires to educate, mobilize, and vote blue, we will have lost an important opportunity.
Events as dramatic and sudden and calamitous as the recent wildfires are the sorts of events to which people viscerally respond. The fires are an instance of what I call "snake!" style dangers - that is, the sorts of things that have the potential to spark action.
It feels incredibly cynical and heartless to call such a terrible season an educational opportunity, and to call for instructive communication based on human suffering and loss, but if that’s what it is… if it's truly a teachable moment (and I think it is) then let’s seize it.
Carpe diem. We may not have many more.
