This is only getting worse
When I began writing for Palmer Report nearly six years ago, global warming records still held surprises. You needed a fair memory to recall them. Today memory is not necessary and there are no more surprises. The hottest year on record? This one. The hottest summer? This summer. The year of the greatest number of disasters caused by climate change? The coming one.
Take last year, for example. The year 2023 was the warmest year since records began back in the mid-nineteenth century. In fact, it was almost certainly the hottest year for many thousands of previous years. With statistics like that, you’d think climate change would make for bigger news.
But then, I’m reminded of my trip to Niagara Falls back in the Spring of 1994. I took a camcorder with me. I quickly learned that, when it comes to Niagara Falls, there is only so much you can film. It’s just a shitload of water going over the side of a cliff. There isn’t a lot more you can say about it.
So I guess I kind of understand why global warming isn’t exactly a news ratings grabber. After a while there’s only so much you can say about an impending global disaster that will devastate every living creature on earth in a few years. It’s just a shitload of water going over the side of a cliff. Of course, this time we’re all in a barrel, going over the side of that cliff with that shitload of water.
Back in 2015 the world decided to do everything in its power to keep global temperatures from rising beyond 2 degrees Celsius. Thus began the Paris Climate Accord, and for the first time in a long while we all had reason to hope. Every single nation on earth eventually became a signatory, with the exception of one or two tawdry and scabrous little Middle Eastern tyrannies like Iran.
You may also recall that 2015 was the year Donald Trump came to the attention of the world in a decidedly negative way. He was a big joke back then, daring to run for the presidency. I sent an email to my mother about it. I still have that email. I said, “By the way, did you hear Donald Trump is planning a run for the presidency? I wonder if he can spell DELUSIONAL.” That was fairly prescient, because, as it turned out, there was a good chance he couldn’t spell DELUSIONAL, but that he’d almost certainly try to spell it in caps. There was also no question, however, that he could be delusional.
On June first, 2017, as president Donald Trump withdrew from les Accord de Paris. It took almost three and a half years for the withdrawal to take full legal effect. The withdrawal was finalised on the 4th of November, 2020, exactly one day after we kicked Donald Trump’s ass out of office. Seventy seven days later, as his first act as President, Joe Biden put us back in.
So no harm no foul, you might say? We were only officially out of the Paris agreement for a handful of days. Not so fast. The harm that Donald Trump did by exacerbating the conservative versus liberal aspect of climate change is incalculable. Today it’s part and parcel of every MAGA Republican’s Articles of Faith that climate change is a hoax.
But even as bad as that is, the inescapable fact also remains that Donald Trump and his disgusting claque of moronic idolaters have distracted us from this most important issue. Trump railing against Judge Engoron is page one news. Our self-inflicted extinction level event is page six.
But even without Trump we seem capable of ignoring climate change all by ourselves. I hear very little conversation about it these days. There’s a boom in SUV sales. Air travel is up, ordinary people are flying more than ever. There is a worrying lack of passion about this most vital human topic. Perhaps TS Eliot didn’t know about the third option for the end of the world. The world could end with neither a bang nor a whimper. The world could be dying of neglect.
Some of the very same people who are shocked and dismayed by the very idea that someone would dare to suggest that their vote doesn’t count, are paradoxically defeatist about the efficacy of our personal efforts against climate change. Every single person’s effort counts. We cannot rise up as a single voice to overcome climate change if we do not do so one person at a time.
Clearly the media and the corporations are against us. But then, they were against us when we changed the tide of human thought about Vietnam, about civil rights, about slavery. We can and we must do it once again. Our survival as a species makes action and dedication essential. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.