Does anyone still care about the climate crisis?

The only thing hotter than the climate is rage for Joe Manchin and the Republican Party.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, the temperature is projected to reach a record-breaking 40 degrees centigrade (104 degrees in freedom units) here in the United Kingdom.

The continent is faring even worse, with extreme temperatures throughout the summer that have led to a drought in Italy and extraordinary wildfires in Spain and France.

Heatwaves such as this used to be once-in-a-generation events. Now they’re occurring yearly.

In London, the average humidity is over 70%. And like much of Europe, air conditioning seldom exists across the UK as historically there has been little need for it.

But that is no longer the case. While English weather stays generally mild throughout the year, the past two summers I have spent in the UK have been at times sweltering. The past month has seen temperatures regularly above 25ºC (80ºF), which can be unbearably hot given high humidity, no AC, and homes designed to retain heat rather than shed it.

One long-term consideration for my move to England this past winter, I reasoned, was that its more temperate climate would inundate the territory from the worst effects of global warming. While floods remain a concern in many parts, such natural disasters seemed quaint compared to the regular wildfires in the American West, the intense humidity of the South, wild tornado seasons in the Midwest, and the hurricanes that increasingly batter the Gulf and East Coast.

But the UK’s lack of foresight to consider the need for new infrastructure is a serious concern, and one which the government, under (thankfully) to-be-determined new leadership (though the entire Conservative Party would leave the country better off if it abdicated altogether) will need to swiftly address if it cares to save lives.

The fact that I have even felt the need to consider where the most habitable place to live to endure the ever-worsening climate crisis is a direct crimination of our forebearers for condemning us to our future, as well as a privilege that most people on Earth—particularly in the Global South—do not have.

As a young person, the anxiety that this heat causes is not just whether the weather this summer will be survivable (the UK is warning of thousands of potential deaths due to heatstroke), but in knowing that every summer for the rest of my life, the lives of my future offspring, and the lives of their offspring, will carry the same risks.

As Europe is turning to ash, America—more specifically Joe Manchin along with every other Republican senator—is deciding to do nothing rather than act on climate. The lack of political will to address our ongoing—not future—climate catastrophe is infuriating.

Last week, Manchin, the West Virginian senator who is bankrolled by the coal industry, torpedoed Democrats’ efforts to pass a substantive climate bill. Without the bill’s passage, and given the Supreme Court’s recent decision on West Virginia v. EPA, it is now impossible for the US to reach its reduced emissions targets—targets that, as many leading environmental activists argue, aren’t even sufficient enough in the first place to halt mass environmental destruction.

Sidenote: thank you so much, West Virginia, for contributing greatly to the demise of humanity.

I grew up in an age where environmentalism wasn’t particularly cool. The fashionable activism and bipartisan consensus of the 1970s (under Nixon of all people) gave way to the retrenchment and hyper-consumerism of the ‘80s and ‘90s. By the time ecofriendly Al Gore controversially lost the presidency in 2000 thanks in part to a politicized Supreme Court, he was just as likely to be mocked on SNL than taken seriously as a candidate that would push the US to lead on the climate emergency. Under Bush, radical environmentalists committing non-deadly arson—not the corporations unethically polluting the atmosphere—came to be considered the biggest domestic security threat in the country. While climate change saw renewed concern under the Obama administration, the Republican party had already completed its shift, begun under Gingrich, away from good faith negotiation on practically any issue, and hence it was already too late to substantively accomplish anything through legislation. Meanwhile, tree huggers were losing the culture battle, with righteous vegans coming off as annoying for preaching their moral high ground, even if they successfully kickstarted the food industry toward meat alternatives (I would happily be a vegan if I didn’t suffer from food allergies that make the option untenable for me).

By the time I came of voting age, the US was already well behind its Western allies in green infrastructure investment, and the planet was only getting hotter and hotter.

I thought the rise in popularity of Greta Thunberg would usher in a wave of committed young voters that would finally put an end to ridiculous right-wing arguments—such as that climate change isn’t real because you can carry a snowball into the Senate chamber; that the US shouldn’t shift to green energy because India and China also contribute unevenly to the problem, as if potential free riders should dissuade us from any action; and that broad tax cuts of all things would boost green investment—by voting these corrupt morons out of office.

Due in part to an outdated and fracturing electoral system, that has not happened. But it is also the case that young people, thought to be the leaders of the movement to decarbonize and care for our planet, have thus far failed to turn out to vote in dramatic numbers (despite marginal improvement) to drive substantive change, and have appeared to lose interest as other concerns bubble to the forefront of public consciousness and dominate the media cycle.

Just three percent of under-30 voters in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll listed climate change as the most important issue facing the US. Instead, inflation tops the mark.

Rising cost of living is a very serious concern, as are a litany of other extremely pressing issues in our declining republic. I’ve written about the need for strong action on guns, on the women’s health crisis caused by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and on the threat from the right wing to our crumbling democratic institutions. Any of these can and should be enough to convince voters of all ages to vote Democratic in all upcoming elections.

But the solution to inflated prices at the pump, even from Democrats, has been to push for more oil production rather than use the opportunity to propel the shift away from reliance on fossil fuels. It is just the latest in an endless list of examples of prioritizing short-term solutions over long-term health and wellbeing.

Climate is a truly existential threat that should color all other policy discussions. As the planet warms, water and food become scarcer amid drought and famine, human lives and property are destroyed by wildfires and floods, coastal cities drown, and mass immigration from unliveable territories fuel anger and xenophobia. It has already begun—the Arab Spring was caused in part by climate-induced mass grain shortages leading to famine. Earlier chaotic societal upheavals have also been linked to climate crises.

In my piece on the Highland Park shooting, I advocated for mass labor strikes in order to force politicians to act on gun policy. The same should be done for climate.

Young people are the engine of the economy—an economy of unsustainable, harmful, and unnecessary growth; an economy that has created a vast ocean between the haves and the have-nots; an economy that, as the pandemic proved, is largely non- “essential” to the ongoing function of society. We should be organizing to put it to a halt until it can become both sustainable and something worth sustaining. School Strike for Climate should become General Strike for Climate.

Because our planet is already punishing us for the sin of dreaming of nothing but shareholder value.

Photo courtesy of Third Way Think Tank.