It’s been over 90 degrees where I live in Vermont for days on end. We can’t take evening walks, plant our gardens, or breath all that well since the Canadian wildfires first compromised our air so badly that some of us have experienced respiratory issues. We’re halfway through the summer and we have yet to spend time on the deck with friends. And all that happened before biblical floods started after record monsoon rains that just wouldn’t quit.
It's beginning to seem like we’ve been witnessing the final stages of our own well-crafted horror movie for a long time now and the credits are about to roll. Among them are extreme heat and massive fires, along with our prolonged denial of global warming and the urgency of acting to decelerate it.
We’ve seen otherworldly orange skies, orange fires that resemble the surface of the sun, erupting volcanoes, cars, homes, and debris tossed around like toys in tornadoes, or floating away in immensely powerful rivers. On the news people are beginning to wander around looking like stunned zombies because they’ve lost everything and have no idea what to do next because things will never be normal again. We all know that there is more to come and our resources, financial and emotional, are running low.
There are those who will say this is too doomsday a scenario to talk about, but we all know it’s going to happen again, and worse. We know that because climate change is rapidly driving unprecedented heatwaves that fuel wildfires -- the two engines hovering over us faster than we thought. We ignore it at our own peril.
Here’s the reality. As the climate continues to warm, heatwaves will get worse – everywhere. It’s happening in Europe, China, India, the U.S. and pretty much everywhere. Temperatures are already soaring above 110 degrees Fahrenheit and towns in several countries are being forced to evacuate, including in Italy and Greece. Florida could be next. This is not hyperbole. Scientists have been warning us about a global pattern of rising temperatures largely due to human activity and too many of us chose to look away. Now even Pope Francis has called on world leaders to heed the Earth’s “chorus of cries of anguish.”
“Every heatwave that we are experiencing today has been made hotter and more frequent because of climate change,” says climate scientist Friederike Otto, co-leader of a World Weather Attribution research collaboration.
Scientists agree that manmade greenhouse gas emissions have rapidly heated the planet and further speculation and theories have led to hundreds of studies conducted for decades, especially involving situations where heat, floods, and drought have occurred. The important thing is that the situation is getting worse and fast. Heat events that happened once every ten years before are now three times more frequent, according to Zurich-based climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne.
Hot, dry conditions help fires spread rapidly, burn longer, and rage more intensely. Heat also means less moisture is retained for vegetation so that it turns to dry fuel for fires. Kim Cobb, director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, noted in June that treacherous heat and fire had burned a large area of the U.S. that month killing more than a dozen people. She said the events embodied the “multiple stressors linked to man-made climate change” that the United Nations has warned about through its scientific panel on global warming. “If ever there was a moment to stop and re-evaluate our fossil fuel emissions trajectory, that moment is now,” she said.
In his recent book, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, writer Jeff Goodell says “global warming” sound too soothing, like we can just turn up the AC and all will be well. But, he says, the planet is burning and we’re running out of time, citing dying fish, melted asphalt, and melting glaciers.” “When it gets too hot, things die,” he says simply.
Noted environmentalist Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, is another truthteller. “We can’t stop global warming at this point,” he told Democracy Now during a June 7th interview. “All we can do is try to stop it short of the places where it cuts civilizations off at the knees.” He calls on politicians and ordinary people to cut into the status quo. “This is the last of these moments we’re going to have when the world is summoned to action by events and when there’s still time to make at least some difference.”
I’m with him. The time is now to turn off the horror movie we have produced and get to work on saving our planet, ourselves, and our kids’ future. Maybe then we can go back to the backyard deck with our friends, no longer complacent, and ready to do what it takes.
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