“Nearly four in 10 Americans say their communities were damaged by extreme weather in the past year, as climate change helps fuel high heat, intense flooding, and other events. And 57% of those US adults who have felt the effects of extreme weather in the past year are worried it’ll happen again in the next, according to the new poll from the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup. The East South Central states are most impacted, including Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee — all deep-red. Trump has come under scrutiny for cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which critics say leave the US less prepared to respond to weather events and track important environmental changes.” https://news.gallup.com/poll/713342/say-extreme-weather-damaged-community.aspx
Let’s be frank: the issue of the climate crisis, the existential climate emergency we are in, has been a secondary issue, at best, for most progressives since the Trumpfascists took office 20 months ago. This is true not just for those of us with other priorities, but even for those of us for whom this issue has been our main one for years or even decades. That includes me.
There are understandable reasons for this, given the Trumpist regime’s efforts to destroy democracy, its massive downsizing of federal government programs, except for the military and ICE/Border Control, its invasion of Venezuela and attack on Iran, the importance of getting at the full truth in the Epstein files, and more.
Why should we, now, as a broad pro-democracy, pro-justice movement working to emerge from November 3rd with Democratic and allied Independent control of both the House and Senate, consciously raise the climate issue?
It’s not just because it’s one of many important issues that has been de-prioritized since Trump’s election, or even because the dominance of the fossil fuel industry is such an existential threat to all forms of life on earth as the 21st century unfolds. It’s also because right now, in mid-August, people all over the country are suffering through triple-digit heat waves, smoke from climate-crisis-magnified fires in Canada and throughout the US West, and flooding from storm after storm. The crisis is not off in the future somewhere; it is here right now.
This is also not really a “progressives vs. moderates” issue, although there are differences over what needs to be done and how fast. Indeed, the climate issue has in the past and can right now and in the future help our movement find the ways to work together most effectively. It can also broaden our base, since this issue affects all of us, whatever our politics. For example, there are many experiences over a number of years of fights against newly proposed oil and gas pipelines and infrastructure bringing together socialists, progressives, liberals, conservatives, and even MAGA people, uniting against a common, destructive enemy.
We are seeing this dynamic right now regarding fossil-fuel- and nuke-powered AI and Data Centers. Over the last year or so, an extensive and rapidly growing mass movement has emerged to fight them in blue, red, and purple areas. Indeed, for many of us, there are similarities between the fight to prevent worldwide climate destabilization and destruction and this fight against billionaire efforts to ultimately replace democratically run human societies with something very different, very scary.
We need a massive anti-Trump turnout for the elections; talking about the climate crisis that many of us are experiencing in our daily lives right now will help that happen. And that turnout will, ultimately, be the best defense against the Trumpfascist efforts to disrupt them.