Unprecedented Heat Is Cooking The Earth This Year
Credit: Passive House Network
May 27, 202630 minutes
Steve Hanley
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I start my day by looking in my email for news from overnight that I can share with readers. Here is a sampling of what I found this morning:
- India is being left to die in the heat. Al Jazeera
- UK smashes May heat record | India heatwave’s power demand. Carbon Brief
- Extreme heat is catching Americans off guard. Yale Climate Connections
- UK and France Break May Records as Heat Scorches Europe. Bloomberg
- Early Season Heat Wave Scorches Western Europe. Inside Climate News
- Europe shatters heat records | India’s killer heat | ‘Eternity glaciers’ disappear. Carbon Brief
So, with all that, you would think today’s story would be about extreme heat, and it will be. But first, many climate scientists now admit their constant warnings about climate change have sparked such pushback from fossil fuel interests that the public has become desensitized to the issue, so a change in strategy is needed.
Motivating Voters
What, are you kidding me? Amid all these headlines, with crop failures spreading throughout the heartland, and massive cuts in how much water Nevada, Arizona, and California may receive from the Colorado River, people are bored with all this doom and gloom stuff? Apparently so. Last fall, The Searchlight Institute published the results of its latest survey of Americans in an article with this headline — The First Rule About Solving Climate Change: Don’t Say Climate Change. In a blog post, it said:
“While battleground voters overwhelmingly agree climate change is a problem, addressing it is not a priority for them. While some policies that help fight climate change are modestly popular, Americans care far more about energy affordability than they do about climate. Advocates and elected officials should understand that their messages are actively weakened by a focus on climate over affordability and low energy prices and that voters are looking for immediate help with rising costs rather than solutions to abstract problems. Solutions that address affordability first, and also help fight climate change, are more likely to see strong support from voters.
“We are far from the first to point this out. Many climate advocates are reading the moment and adjusting their messaging to focus on costs. Climate change is not a high priority for most Americans. If you look at any public poll from the past year, you’ll find that the overwhelming majority of Americans say the cost of living is their top issue, and by a significant margin. In our survey, the top three issues that battleground voters say leaders should focus on today are affordable prices (71%), followed by healthcare (55%), and jobs and wages (50%).
“While there is bipartisan consensus on the importance of elected officials focusing on affordability, lowering energy costs, improving public health, and diversifying America’s energy sources to meet rising demand, there is a partisan gulf that emerges as soon as you insert the words ‘climate change’ into a sentence.
“In our research, Republicans and Democrats both agree that affordability should be a national priority, and they’re mostly aligned on the importance of lowering energy costs. That said, mentioning ‘climate change’ opens up a 50 point gap in support between Republicans and Democrats not present on other issues…. While Democrats are generally more supportive of focuses on environmental issues, climate change in particular is extra polarizing.
“When leaders say the words ‘climate change,’ voters get bad vibes. A majority of battleground voters say they feel ‘suspicious of leaders who are pushing for certain actions to be taken or not be taken.’ Lowering costs … is the only issue that over half of battleground voters say is extremely important to them.
“When Americans are asked about the top strains on their household budget, utility bills come first (63%), outpacing food costs (58%) and housing costs (50%). [Half said they] want their home electricity and heating bills to be lower. In the same question, only 11% wanted policymakers to help them with home energy upgrades, and just 4% wanted cheaper electric vehicles.
“Americans aren’t interested in substitutes or long-term schemes. They don’t want to be sold electric vehicles or appliances with claims that they will see lower utility bills [in the future]. They want relief right now. They want necessities like electricity and heat to get more affordable as soon as possible, and they will notice if that doesn’t happen.”
Al Gore Adjusts His Message
Al Gore, who has been a tireless advocate for addressing climate change, is still at it, but he uses different words today than he did twenty years ago. Rather than directly invoking morality, he talks about economics instead. According to the New York Times, he now talks about affordability, not carbon emissions. He stresses how wind and solar have become the least expensive options. “We’re in a different world now. The options are terrific,” he told an audience in Nashville last week.
Bill McKibben recently took a similar tack. He celebrated that climate activists no longer need to “fight against the force of economic gravity. [Affordability] is the place where we have the most leverage. Instead of having the economic wind forever blowing at us, now it’s in our sails. We do finally have a tool to work with.”
Johan Rockström, who heads the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said recently, “the winning argument is not the ethical and moral one, it is the economic one.” A focus on economics avoids the political blowback that the moral argument often provokes. “Experience says there are a lot of people who will be more easily persuaded by the impact on their pocketbooks,” Al Gore told The Times.
While people — especially Americans — are exposed to the daily effects of a warming planet, they seem to have an unlimited capacity to dismiss the cause of their distress. Right-wing groups in the UK are actively opposing renewable energy projects in the North Sea and clamoring for more oil and gas extraction in that area. It takes a special kind of churlishness to be so determinedly pigheaded, but as Noël Coward once observed, “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.”
Record Heat In Europe
Last weekend, temperatures in the UK shattered previous temperature records in May by a full 2°C. The Met Office said the temperatures would be “exceptional in the UK even in mid-summer, let alone in May.”
In France, where Monday highs surpassed 37°C (98.6°F) in the southwest, the national warning system was activated for the first time in May since it was introduced in 2004. Seven deaths were linked to the heat. Météo-France said abnormally hot periods had occurred in the month in previous years, “but nothing comparable to this one.” Spain may endure temperatures as high as 40°C this week.
Peter Thorne, a climate scientist at Maynooth University in Ireland, said: “We know beyond a shadow of a doubt” that the climate crisis has made heatwaves such as the latest one stronger and more likely. “But nevertheless, many of the records being set, particularly in the UK and France, are mind-bogglingly crazy.” And yet, people don’t want to hear it. All they care about is what their utility bill will be this month, according to The Searchlight Institute. We can thank Rupert Murdoch and Faux News for that.
No Moralizing Please
The takeaway from all this is that moralizing turns people off. The fossil fuel industry has done a marvelous job of demonizing client science to the point that people no longer trust what researchers have to say. Well done, Charles Koch. You have successfully thrown everyone on Earth under the bus in order to expand your already prodigious wealth. You must be so proud of yourself to make so many suffer so you can wallow in your oil soaked money.
For the rest of us, we must now learn to avoid using the dreaded words “climate change.” Forget the melting ice caps, the slowing ocean currents, the crop failures, the deaths from extreme heat. None of that matters, apparently. The only thing that counts, that motivates people to vote one way or another, is affordability.
“The Lord helps those who help themselves,” my old Irish grandmother liked to say. If that is the case, the human race is in desperate trouble and there will be no divine intervention to pull our chestnuts out of the fire we started. When it comes to an epitaph for our species, it may be something like this: “They couldn’t be bothered to save themselves.”
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