Climate change’s heat is baking us to death, we must act

Elizabeth Shackelford, Tribune News Service

America celebrated its 250th year of independence under a historic heat dome that shattered more than 148 records for daily high temperature across the Eastern United States. The nation’s capital recorded the hottest Fourth of July on record at 103 degrees. Philadelphia, where our Declaration of Independence was written, recorded three days in a row above 101 degrees for the first time ever. The heat last week was so severe that parades and events across the country were canceled, including the flagship Independence Day Parade planned in Washington. The heat index in Chicago exceeded 100 degrees on July 1, putting the power grid under strain.

It isn’t just the United States. Heat waves have rocked Europe three times already this summer, with record temperatures hitting the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Portugal in late May, late June and again right now. The June heat wave caused more than 1,300 excess deaths. With less snow on the ground each year to deflect the sun, and the warming Arctic nearby, where rapidly melting sea ice leaves more ocean to absorb the sun’s energy, Europe is warming faster than any other region on earth.

Since only about 20% of households in Europe have air conditioning, it’s hard to ignore. I’m in France now and can attest. We went to the mountains seeking relief, but the heat was relentless even at 4,000 feet. With no air conditioning, even sleep was a chore.

But these inconveniences are nothing compared with what lies ahead if we don’t change course. The most alarming new temperature record was the ocean surface, which hit almost 70 degrees in June, capping off six months of record warmth. Marine heat waves are triggering extreme weather, killing off marine wildlife and bleaching coral reefs, and even more heat is in the forecast with a super El Niño weather pattern expected this year. This will cause extreme flooding in some regions and droughts and wildfires in others. It could even cause famine in parts of the globe.

All of this is threatening to collapse the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, a critical ocean current system that pulls water from warm areas of the ocean up north where it cools and sinks and cycles back south. The Gulf Stream, which brings warm water from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic Ocean and shapes the climate in the United States as well as Western Europe, is part of that system.

Once thought to be a low-risk possibility for some future generation, new estimates suggest AMOC could collapse within decades and that it’s already too late to turn back the clock. A mysterious cold ocean blob has been discovered south of Greenland that scientists suggest is a sign of AMOC heading toward a tipping point. AMOC’s collapse would be globally catastrophic; in fact, it’s the event at the centre of the apocalyptic 2004 film “The Day After Tomorrow,” starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

As my mother lamented recently, “Climate change is ruining summer.” And it’s ruining summer whether you believe in it or not. I remain shocked that so few people, in America in particular, are not seized with this and raising alarm. The frog in boiling water metaphor is just a little too on the nose.

Ironically, the very things that help Americans avoid the realities of climate change are speeding it up: our car-based lifestyle, our plentiful air conditioning, our economy based largely on industries that happen inside away from the elements. I lived and worked in Africa for years and never met an African skeptical of climate change.

So perhaps it’s unsurprising that the US government today stands alone in aggressively opposing the mitigation of climate change and doubling down on the fossil fuels that cause it. The fossil fuel industry has paid a lot of money for its friendly treatment in Washington, but President Donald Trump’s administration has taken that favoritism to lengths so absurd it would be comical if this weren’t such a dire issue.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law a year ago, increased fossil fuel subsidies by $4 billion to reach nearly $35 billion a year, which coincidentally is roughly equal to the cost of renewable energy projects that were canceled due to Trump administration policy changes. The administration has even paid $2.5 billion of taxpayer money to get companies to shut down existing wind energy projects.

Like tobacco companies that spent decades denying the health dangers of cigarettes, people who financially benefit from dependence on fossil fuels will always try to deny that climate change is happening, and that their products are causing it. Politicians in the pocket of these industries will do the same.

But we will keep experiencing its disastrous effects in our day-to-day lives, in the form of hotter summers, longer tornado seasons, more dangerous droughts and floods, longer fire seasons, higher food costs and more expensive insurance.

We Americans can choose to put our heads in the sand, but it’s hot down there now, too.