The Heat is On

Let’s stop kidding ourselves and do something

If you’re in the US this weekend, I bet I know how you're feeling right now.

Hot.

Right? Maybe worried too?

As I’m writing this (on Friday), forecasters are predicting triple-digit temperatures for what will be the hottest stretch in over a decade from New York City to Michigan.

And if it feels like record-level heat waves are becoming a regular occurrence, you’re right. So are other scary developments, like dangerous storms, out-of-control fires, and totally bleached out coral reefs.

Extreme weather is not some abstract threat. We now live with:

• more frequent and intense heat waves (just like this one), affecting billions of people;

• deadlier floods, such as recent ones in Bolivia and the U.S. Midwest, displacing communities and costing billions;

• historic droughts, including Florida’s worst in 24 years, threatening water supplies and agriculture;

• stronger, more destructive hurricanes and cyclones, with above-normal Atlantic hurricane seasons forecasted;

• catastrophic wildfires, from California to South Korea, destroying homes and lives;

• increased tornado outbreaks, with the U.S. experiencing record numbers of deadly, high-intensity tornadoes;

• rising ocean temperatures and acidification, damaging coral reefs and fisheries;

• accelerating sea-level rise, threatening coastal cities and infrastructure; and

• expanding disease ranges, as warmer climates allow vectors like mosquitoes to spread.

Don’t take my word for it. And please don’t rely on your social media feeds either. There’s a lot of bad information out there. Instead, try asking your favorite AI tool to summarize peer-reviewed science on these matters. Check the references too. See what the experts say. The science community is in strong agreement on this stuff.

But many of our elected officials pretend otherwise. It’s maddening.

First, look at the White House:

• The President has long expressed skepticism about climate change. He called climate change a “hoax” when running for office. (He chooses his words more carefully now—maybe he knows better?) And his Energy Secretary recently stated that “climate alarmism should be consigned to the ash heaps of history.”

• One of the administration’s first moves was to scrub or alter mentions of “climate change” across federal websites. According to Politico, an internal USDA memo directed staff to “identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change.” The term Orwellian is overused, but it seems apt here.

• NOAA’s flagship climate science portal, “Climate.gov,” is being shuttered, and the entire content staff was fired last month.

• Hundreds of scientists working on the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment were recently fired.

• At NASA’s renowned Goddard Institute for Space Studies (a world-leading climate research lab), scientists were evicted from their offices.

• Climate science programs at the National Science Foundation, the EPA, the CDC, and the Departments of Interior, Agriculture and Energy are on the chopping block.

• The President has been busy with executive orders too—mandating withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord; terminating the American Climate Corps program; rescinding prior executive actions, including orders on considering climate financial risk, promoting clean cars, and an order on environmental justice for disadvantaged communities. Not wasting any time, on day one of the administration, the President signed an order nullifying California’s plan to ban new gas-powered cars by 2035.

• The administration has ended or weakened more than 100 environmental regulations, including limits on power plant emissions and vehicle fuel efficiency standards.

These sweeping rollbacks of climate research and science capacity, as well as efforts to hide references to climate change, are sometimes portrayed as cost-cutting measures and/or eliminating “wasteful” programs. But when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) disparages federal climate research as “fake science in [the] Green New Scam,” it’s hard to believe it’s not some odd ideology that’s driving these cuts.

Meanwhile, the House version of the“big beautiful bill” doesn’t step up at all either. Instead, it aims to:

• eliminate or weaken federal mandates and incentives for emissions reductions and renewable energy;

• cut funding for clean energy research and climate resilience;

• limit the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases; and

• block federal agencies from considering climate impacts in permitting and infrastructure decisions.

I could go on enumerating the myriad negative actions. In the interest of being succinct, I won't, but I hope you’re paying close attention—even if it is hard to keep up with so much going on, or if it’s just too depressing. When you start to tally up climate measures like I’m doing here, it feels pretty astounding.

So. . . as you swelter under the all-too-real impacts of climate change, I urge you to engage however you think best and in whatever way you can to make sure your elected officials know that you oppose this know-nothing approach. Don’t let them get away with avoiding the hard work of crafting smart climate policy under the pretense of a climate hoax.

Your message can be something like this:

“The gig is up. We’re experiencing the impact of the climate emergency for ourselves. Debate the best approach, sure. But don’t tell us what we’re seeing and feeling isn’t real. Tell us what you’re going to do about it.”

Let’s get to work.