By John Burr, Jacksonville Climate Coalition
If you picked the wrong time to put the dog out or the kids to bed while watching the presidential debate last month, you could have easily missed the climate crisis question.
Yes, there was a climate crisis question, and for that I give CNN points. It’s the rare political debate where the subject is raised. Apparently, most debate moderators don’t consider the Earth’s dangerous climate distortions, i.e. “the only existential threat to humanity in our time,” worth their airtime.
So here we are. Heat waves are stalking the world, an early season hurricane overnight turned into a Category 5 and in Florida and other states, private home insurers are backing out of writing policies, worried about the costs of the next big storm. Meanwhile, our two presidential candidates joust over their golf handicaps.
Time and again, when people are polled about the biggest problems facing the country, they cite price inflation, out-of-control immigration, unaffordable housing, a shrinking middle class, a political system that caters to the rich.
Climate crisis? Not on the radar. The price of gasoline? Yeah, dude, that’s huge.
Until people wake up and start making noise, the climate crisis will remain in the shadows of the mainstream.
But not forever. Sooner than many realize, the heat waves and droughts and powerful storms and flooding will become too numerous and too destructive to brush aside. The insurance industry has this figured out, no doubt.
So let’s get active. Some ideas:
- Those electric cars? They are pretty cool, and they’re getting cheaper all the time. What’s it going to take to build an expansive charging network?
- No, we don’t want our electric utility to build a $1 billion gas-fired plant that’s going to be spewing carbon dioxide into our air for the next 40 years – not now, when the great majority of new electricity production is coming from solar power.
- Of course, we want people to get trained in the clean energy jobs that are here and the ones that are coming. What can the schools do to help?
- Darn right, we want clear-cutting of trees to be stopped; In fact, we want to plant many millions more trees to reduce excessive heat and clean the air.
- Yes, we want our kids riding in electric school buses.
Isn’t this fun? Once we get started, we can find all kinds of things to do. Action dispels worry, and success breeds more success. Let’s get going – make some noise!
John Burr is the editor of the Jacksonville Climate Coalition newsletter. He also writes a Substack newsletter called Radical Green Zealots. Subscribe at johnburr.substack.com. Banner photo: A temperature gauge in a vehicle (iStock image)
If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece to The Invading Sea, email Editor Nathan Crabbe at ncrabbe@fau.edu. Sign up for The Invading Sea newsletter by visiting here.
