The Los Angeles fires won’t affect climate denial. They should.
The disastrous California wildfires are another undeniable sign of the dangers of climate change.
Drenching rains resulting from rising ocean temperatures lead to overgrowth on hillsides, which in abnormally dry weather can catch fire. These “extreme weather swings will continue to become more frequent and volatile, with precipitation increasingly concentrated in shorter, intense bursts, interspersed with more severe dry spells,” the newspaper said.
The data is the data: “In [a] study, published Thursday in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, the researchers examined global weather records and found that hydroclimate whiplash events have already grown 31% to 66% since the mid-1900s, and are likely to more than double in a scenario in which the world reaches 3 degrees Celsius, or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming.”
During a spate of fires in 2022, Jon Heggie, a division chief with California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told CNN: “What I can tell you is this is a direct result of what is climate change. You can’t have a 10-year drought in California and expect things to be the same. And we are now paying the price for that 10-year drought and that climate change.”
These sorts of horror shows will become routine if climate change deniers, led by the MAGA anti-science crowd, get their way. Put differently, the cost of refusing to listen to Al Gore — who has been sounding the climate change alarm for decades — and the scientific community is proving astronomically high. (At a 2017 energy summit, Gore warned: “All over the West, we’re seeing these fires get much, much worse. The underlying cause is the heat.”)
Gore was on the money when he dubbed climate change an “inconvenient truth.” That has created a media and political challenge for right-wing ideologues and their fossil fuel backers. Their solution, exemplified by President-elect Donald Trump’s reaction to extreme weather events, be they storms in North Carolina or fires in California: Deride officials and invent conspiracies to explain how liberal politicians “failed.” And spare little sympathy for victims.
Amid the Los Angeles disaster, Trump has made false allegations about a lack of FEMA funding and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s supposed refusal to sign a “water restoration declaration.” Mostly, Trump insulted and mocked Newsom as firefighters were still battling the blazes and homeowners were losing everything.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk (the “real” president, say Democrats trolling Trump) blamed Los Angeles’s Black mayor, Karen Bass, for prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion policies over fire safety. And the right-wing media machine claimed Bass cut fire department funding. That was flat-out false, as ABC News and Politico reported.
“The city was in the process of negotiating a new contract with the fire department at the time the budget was being crafted, so additional funding for the department was set aside in a separate fund until that deal was finalized in November,” Politico explained. Rather than being cut, “the city’s fire budget increased more than $50 million year-over-year compared to the last budget cycle.”
In short, MAGA climate deniers and their fossil fuel backers cannot deal with the deadly and destructive effects of climate change, the massive costs it inflicts, and the untold human suffering in red and blue states alike. Confronted with the very outcomes Gore and others predicted, they resort to untruths and insults.
Enough. Democrats, independents, sensible Republicans, state and local officials, homeowners and the rest need to be blunt and consistent: Climate denial destroys lives; dishonest narratives and a lack of empathy for victims are repellent.
If ordinary Americans harmed by Republicans’ irrational policy positions are to both hold those responsible to account and change the political landscape to produce lifesaving policy changes, they need to make the connection between GOP ideology and climate disasters.
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