This is THE big issue, and it’s not getting the right attention.
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Lately I’ve been dumbstruck by the rare opportunities not being seized by the Harris-Walz campaign and the Democrats. I wonder why they don’t simply present the following to voters in certain swing states:
You live in a swing state that could determine who is president.
Your state is increasingly hit by extreme, catastrophic weather events and record temperatures.
Maybe your own house, property, or personal wellbeing were affected. Maybe someone you know lost everything. Maybe someone you know was badly injured or killed. Maybe you’re struggling with killer heat, floods, fires, droughts, pestilence. Maybe you can no longer get insurance for your home.
What do you do?
Presumably, you try to understand what is causing these problems and what can be done about them. Because you know more is coming your way.
Since we’re in the final days before a crucial presidential and congressional election, you will want to know who to vote for — which candidates are committed to robust solutions.
Right?
Well, it certainly seems like a no-brainer.
And yet, huge numbers of voters in these states — possibly a majority — support the political party and candidate who have denied that extreme weather is now the reality.
I’m talking about people in the GOP camp who have repeatedly made clear that they won’t do anything about it. People who disparage any “green” solutions, mindlessly dismissing them with a schoolyard taunt like “woke.” People — often those backed by the petroleum industry — who advocate increased output of the very fossil fuels that are exacerbating all these hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and more.
Even after seeing the devastation of this year’s hurricanes.
Donald Trump recently said of climate change, “It’s one of the greatest scams of all time… people aren’t buying it any more.” And, he said, “drill drill drill.”
Related: Donald Trump Drills Deep Into the Pockets of Fossil Fuel – WhoWhatWhy
As president, Trump overturned an estimated 100 environmental regulations and pulled the US out of the international climate accord, the Paris Agreement. He shrank the EPA — and actually made the agency remove the words “climate change” from its website.
By comparison, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have a firm grasp on the reality of the climate issue and will build on a significant effort started before Trump’s presidency and resurrected vigorously after it ended. As part of its broad Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden-Harris White House established the most far-reaching climate law in history.
Oh, did I mention that the same Trump voters also support the candidate who has encouraged attacks on FEMA personnel — the very people working to help them out in the midst of this crisis?
In fact, nothing — including colossal hurricanes like Milton and Helene — appears to affect people’s political choices.
As noted by University of New Hampshire sociologist Lawrence Hamilton, “I watched for many years the hypothesis that hurricanes or other events would move the needle on public opinion, but saw little evidence of response to individual events.”
Is this not the definition of insanity?
Especially because people do seem to get it — kind of — but just not care enough compared to other things. For example, a majority of Georgians (71 percent) — including most people in every county in the state— now recognize that global warming is happening. Yet as of this writing, Trump is slightly ahead in Georgia.
Even in Florida, a majority, polled before the most recent duo of hurricanes, said they supported candidates who would address the issue. That included 35 percent of Republicans and 39 percent of unaffiliated respondents. Yet Trump has a lock on the state.
The top issue, voters say, is the economy. Yet the in-your-face tremendous costs they are already facing due to climate change somehow aren’t factored in. Estimates of the damage by Helene and Milton are around $50 billion. Hardly any of that is insured — more than 95 percent of the toll from Helene won’t be covered.
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I recently spent some time in several European countries and had the opportunity to interact with a wide range of people from varied backgrounds. One thing they all had in common: They are deeply worried about America.
About what has become of it, about where it is headed. And how a MAGA-instigated collapse of a country they looked up to could impact all of them as well. Europeans are terribly worried about how extreme weather is affecting them and will affect them in the future. They know that we’re truly all in this together — that if the US screws this up, we’re all sunk.
Neither they, nor I, can understand why voters in the states suffering from the extreme weather of climate change fail to focus on the most obvious and existential dangers, instead citing a potpourri of petty grievances or fabricated threats that politicians and influencers have stuck in their heads.
Such misleading and confounding memes, like disinformation about vaccines, are themselves like deadly viruses. Spread online to advance the fortunes of certain political actors, these lies can literally induce people to harm themselves and their friends and neighbors.
An estimated 232,000 COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented — but were not, because of failure to vaccinate — from May 30, 2021, to September 3, 2022, according to a study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Related: Building Herd Immunity to Truth: More on RFK Jr.’s Anti-Vax Crusade
This is not the time to mince words or remain above the fray. The Democratic campaign should seize the opportunity to shake voters awake on a life-or-death issue that directly affects everyone alive today — and their children and their children’s children.
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