Six on History: Climate Change
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"Student activism and its ability to contribute to the transformation of society is not a new phenomenon. Two of the most powerful examples are the role played by secondary school students in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa and in the African American Civil Rights movement in the United States. International student unrest in the 1960s and anti-Vietnam War and Black Power protests in the United States energized students who challenged conditions in their schools and communities.
The week before the September 20, 2019 global student strike for climate action, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted: “New York City stands with our young people. They’re our conscience. We support the 9/20 #ClimateStrike.” The city’s Department of Education decided that students with parental permission to attend the September 20th climate action rally would receive an excused absence.
De Blasio and the DOE were wrong. Civics education means teachers must be out there marching with their students modeling what it means to be active citizens promoting democracy and social justice and struggling to reverse the devastating climate change that threatens human civilization."
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In other words, just to take the American version of climate change, from raging wildfires to mega-droughts, increasing numbers of ever-more-powerful hurricanes to greater flooding, rising sea levels (and disappearing coastlines) to devastating heat waves (and even, as in Texas recently, climate-influenced freezes), not to speak of future migration surges guaranteed to make border crossing an even more fraught political issue, ahead lies a world that could someday make our present pandemic planet seem like a dreamscape. And here’s the problem: At least with Covid-19, in a miracle of modern scientific research, vaccines galore have been developed to deal with that devastating virus, but sadly there will be no vaccines for climate change.
THE WOUNDING OF PLANET EARTHKeep in mind as well that our country, the United States, is not only an especially wounded one when it comes to the pandemic; it’s also a wounding one, both at home and abroad. The sports pages of death could easily be extended, for instance, to this country’s distant wars, something Brown University’s Costs of War Project has long tried to do. (That site is, in a sense, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center for America’s grim, never-ending conflicts of the 21st century.)
Choose whatever post-9/11 figures you care to when it comes to our forever wars and they’re all staggering: invasions and occupations of distant lands; global drone assassination campaigns; or the release of American air power across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa (most recently, the strike President Biden ordered in Syria that killed a mere “handful” of militia men—22, claim some sources —a supposedly “proportionate” number that did not include any women or children, though it was a close call until the president cancelled a second strike). And don’t forget Washington’s endless arming of, and support for, countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates engaged in their own orgies of death and destruction in Yemen. Pick whatever figures you want, but the wounding of this planet in this century by this country has been all too real and ongoing. ... "
"As vaccine rollouts allow us to plan for a post-pandemic world, we face another looming emergency: the climate crisis. While pandemic pall is visceral, climate change can feel far off, requiring effort to remain engaged, or at a minimum, to keep paying attention. But with our future dependent on climate action over the next nine years, it’s urgent that we zoom out of our siloed lives and step into the broader panorama. The climate crisis demands our attention.
As bicoastal medical and mental health practitioners, we are deeply concerned about the adverse health consequences of global warming, including: increased risk of heart disease and stroke, higher rates of violence, the widening spread of infectious diseases as well as the psychological toll.
Yet we’re also aware that the climate crisis has been eclipsed by competing stressors. Right now, many of us are still in pandemic survival mode, eking out each day with the repetitious feel of Groundhog Day. When stress overlays stress, it is a reminder to focus our energies on a single common denominator: resilience.
Humans are innately resilient, having proved over millennia our ability to spring back in the face of overwhelming adversity. Evolutionary psychology accounts for how human behavior has evolved to preserve and protect us — from brain function to stress response to support systems, our ability to adapt is one of our greatest attributes.
Research suggests that although there may be a genetic component, resilience is a function of a potpourri of factors, not a must-have gene, trait or cultural determinant. Resilience also appears to cut right through social classifications of culture, race, class, gender identity, religion and political affiliation. This knowledge that resilience is widely distributed is encouraging, as is the fact that it can be developed and nurtured.
We can better regulate our nervous systems. When a stressor — like witnessing a climate catastrophe firsthand or worrying about those affected — causes us to panic, or we become numb to avoid the unpleasantness of it, we become dysregulated. Simple acts like abdominal breathing, counting the lengths of our breaths, walking, stretching or even snuggling a pet can bring us back into a mind-body sweet spot — what some in the field of psychology call “Window of Tolerance” or “Zone of Regulation.” Essentially, the goal is resetting our nervous system, rather than reacting to intense emotion. Once we regulate ourselves, we can help others do the same.
We can shift our attitude and perspective. The narratives we tell ourselves color our lives. Yes, the climate crisis is scary and overwhelming, but doomsday thinking inhibits our ability to act. As climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe says, “Fear is not what’s going to motivate us. … What we need to fix this thing is rational hope.” Wherever we fall on the half-full/ half-empty continuum, we cannot cancel our proclivities overnight, but we can move toward equilibrium in several ways.
We can reframe the situation. Yes, our planet is in crisis, but the Biden administration has prioritized climate, paving the way for much-needed systemic change. Amid the bad news about the climate are small signs of positive change: Solar power is now the cheapest source of electricity. The most recent pandemic recovery bill allocates much-needed funding for public transit, which is less polluting than single-occupancy vehicles. Climate champion Deb Haaland was confirmed as interior secretary. Massachusetts just passed a sweeping climate change law.
We can connect. When societies knit themselves together and find common ground, much is possible. According to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 63 percent of Americans are worried about global warming. When we feel we are not alone (and clearly we are not), the knowledge that others understand and share our concerns energizes us as individuals and as communities. Reaching out, creating dialogue or sharing a meal with others fosters much-needed social connection, and boosts individual and collective resilience.
We can express gratitude. For quiet moments in nature, for the first responders who protect us during climate-fueled natural disasters, and for those who continue to show up on the climate front: grass-roots activists, children and young adults, parents and grandparents, philanthropists and scientists.
Berry had spent nearly two decades climbing the ranks of Southern Company, America’s second-largest energy provider and the owner of Georgia Power. By the time he was under oath that day, company execs had vowed to store newly burnt coal ash in landfills designed for safely disposing of such waste. But an unprecedented challenge remained: Figuring out what to do with 90 million tons of coal ash — enough to fill more than 50 Major League Baseball stadiums to the brim — that had accumulated over the better part of a century in ash ponds that were now leaking.
Georgia Power would have to shut down roughly 30 ponds from the Appalachian foothills to the wetlands near the Georgia coast. After draining all the ponds, the company would have two options for disposing of the highly contaminated dry ash left behind: It could either move the ash into a landfill fitted with a protective liner, or pack the dry ash into a smaller footprint and place a cover on top — leaving a gaping hole in the ground that, in some places, would be larger than Disneyland. The former would cost more but vastly reduce the possibility of toxic leakage; the latter lowered expenses but would perpetually risk contaminating drinking water in neighboring communities. ... "
“Rush Limbaugh, more than any other individual, is responsible for shifting conservative opinion to deny the existence of global warming.” -John K. Wilson, author of The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh’s Assault on Reason.
A prominent climate change denier with a popular radio show died on Wednesdsay. He was 70.
Rush Limbaugh’s death sparked a flood of obituaries focused on his broad political legacy. The Associated Press called him “one of the most powerful voices in politics, influencing the rightward push of American conservatism and the rise of Donald Trump.” The New York Times called him “a singular figure” who “pushed baseless claims and toxic rumors long before Twitter and Reddit became havens for such disinformation.”
HuffPost’s obituary, particularly extensive, also centered Limbaugh’s legacy on Trump. “Trump’s ascension to the presidency couldn’t have happened without Limbaugh’s brand of right-wing media,” it read.
But none of those obituaries mentioned the climate, which is heating at a dangerous and unprecedented rate in large part because of Limbaugh’s lies.
Rush Limbaugh was one of the pioneers of anti-environmentalism, science denial, and climate change conspiracy. For 30 years, he falsely told his audience of more than 15 million listeners on nearly 600 U.S. stations that the entire scientific profession had been indoctrinated by liberals and were unworthy of trust.
It is in part because of Limbaugh’s bombastic but popular climate lies that mainstream Republican politicians stopped working toward good-faith policy solutions to the climate crisis, and started embracing denial, said John K. Wilson, author of The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh’s Assault on Reason.
“Climate change denial is one of the greatest and most terrible gifts Limbaugh gave to conservatism,” he said. “It will continue for years and decades to come.”
HEATED spoke with Wilson about Limbaugh’s climate legacy on Wednesday, as millions of Texans suffered from a freak winter storm made more likely by the climate crisis. Their suffering was compounded by the ineptitude of the state’s Republican politicians, who refused to prepare their power and water infrastructure for the effects of climate change.
Limbaugh is survived by his lies and their consequences. HEATED’s full interview with Wilson is below, lightly edited and condensed for clarity."
