Yesterday we celebrated nearly a half century of earth days. Some problems have been dealt with, but the problem of climate change has only been getting more urgent. People have been driven out of their homes, communities have been submerged, people have been starved and parched for lack of food and water, fallen victim to thieves looking for the means of survival, and for any or all of those reasons lost their lives and their families to climate change. Those politicians and corporate managers who have refused to lift a finger to protect the climate our lives depend on, those who have blocked any effort to protect our global home should be held criminally guilty of a litany of crimes from conspiracy to murder.
One of the highest priorities of government is to protect us – against fraud, weapons, bad people and natural disasters. A certain trashmouth thrives on enemies and goes looking for them in the Middle East where many share a religion less common here, and on the southern border where he seems terrified by women and their children worn out by a trek of thousands of miles, and starved by the endless walk. They give him the opportunity to shake his fists and flick his tongue at the weak and defenseless.
Amidst the fake threats he claims we should fear, he ignores the big one, the threat that will make our lives nasty, brutish and short, leave our communities in chaos with disease, drowning, and starvation. Climate change destroyed much of this year’s corn crop in the Midwest and is gradually damaging and destroying food supplies, flooding homes and farms, weaponizing bugs, mosquitos and disease. That’s real news that should displace his make-believe one.
But you can’t shoot the climate – that just doesn’t fit the demands of his trash talk and bravado. Dealing with the changing climate requires being willing to listen and learn from people who know what they are talking about, to put aside the arrogance of claiming that he alone knows more than all the world’s scientists, doctors and specialists. He might have to accept advice from people who have spent decades studying the problem.
A world in chaos, where survival depends on theft and murder, is the oyster of hoodlums, gang members and terrorists. Rather than worry about Honduran immigrants, let’s deal with the fact that our country can be turned into Honduras because everything that creates wealth and normality is threatened by climate change. We may hold the Russians and the Chinese at bay with armed forces, but the military will not keep the climate normal.
Are we strong enough to look into the real face of danger and organize ourselves to deal with it? Our government and our scientists and our people have dealt with real challenges when we’ve let them. We’ve sacrificed when we had to. Economists tell us that the most efficient and effective step we could take is a significant carbon tax, but we don’t trust government to redirect the profits from such a tax in order to protect ordinary Americans the way it did when we were at war in the 40s. Too many politicians insist that any attempt to help and protect the people is socialism; they corrode our ability to use government to protect us.
Let’s talk straight: any politician who doesn’t make dealing with climate change our top priority should have the book thrown at him or her. Climate change is already killing millions. It’s not opinion; it’s physics. There are fanatics in Pakistan and Africa who don’t believe in science, where the worst diseases are endemic, and where people kill aid workers trying to vaccinate the population. We know better; there’s no excuse.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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