Have been in London since early spring, waiting on a job opportunity, and gnashing my teeth about the weather (but not in the way you might think).
I am gnashing my teeth because the searing heat of 2023 has not returned, and popular opinion is that climate change cannot be real because it’s so bleeding cold right now. To which I say: GAH!
Make no mistake - I love it! July was a wonderful, cool parade of semi-cloudy days in the low 60s, with sharp winds and gusts of pattering rain. As a card carrying isbjorn, I was in heaven! Everyone else was whinging and moaning, desperate for “summer” and demanding that the heat in the pub be put up. I was not amused.
Today London saw a high of 87 sweltering degrees - too hot for me, but not an out of control, climate-change-induced hell number. Tomorrow should be 10 degrees cooler, and the following week is forecast for temps in the mid-70s; ideal summer weather, with clear skies and lush greenery abounding, watered by the chill and rainy spring.
From the Met Weather service:
The big player in determining what weather we get is the jet stream. This fast-moving ribbon of air high in our atmosphere steers low pressure systems around. If the jet stream is over us, you can expect wet and windy weather to head our way. Usually in the summer the jet stream moves to the north of the British Isles, and this allows warmer air to move in from the south, especially if a ridge of high pressure extends from the Azores, aka The Azores High. If high pressure sits over the UK for a prolonged spell of time, temperatures will rise in the sunny skies, and then of course we’ll start complaining about heat, drought and wildfires. But so far in 2024 we’ve not had to worry about that.
Instead the first half of summer 2024 has seen the jet stream sitting across and even to the south of the UK, and that has meant spells of wind and rain interspersed with some brighter interludes. But even then it hasn’t felt like “summer” because we’ve been in quite a chilly airmass with cool northerly winds. Cool enough that we’ve been digging out our jumpers and tempted to turn the heating back on.
Mean temperatures for June 2024 averaged out at just 0.4°C below the norm. But that’s thanks to one short blast of hot weather at the end of the month masking the previous three weeks of chilly conditions in brisk Arctic winds. It then went cold again for the start of July 2024, with mean temperatures running 2.4°C below average under cloudy skies. All of which is a big contrast to the previous year, when June 2023 was the hottest June on record for the UK.
In the United States, there’s been a similar lack of catastrophically bad weather so far this summer. Heat? Yes. Anything that pierces the consciousness of the mainstream media? No.
So what do we do in the western world when the local weather does not demonstrate the reality of the climate crisis rapidly unfolding around the globe?
The mainstream media in the United States is woeful at reporting on climate change.
Statista reports:
CBS aired the highest number of minutes of climate change coverage in 2023, with a total of 430 minutes (over seven hours) across its morning news, evening news, and Sunday political shows. Figures for 2015 to 2019 do not include morning shows for ABC, NBC, or CBS, but show an overall increase in coverage between those years. Fox News Sunday aired 40 minutes of coverage in 2021, the highest since 2017, but this number fell to just six minutes in 2023.
If a wildfire or heatwave does not present itself for reportage, there is no mention. Weather in other countries - heatwaves in India, for example, and famine in sub-Saharan Africa - is worth only of a few lines or a brief mention, and the connection to the climate crisis is either not made, or mentioned only briefly in passing.
The same paradigm holds true in the UK, of course. With the exception of The Guardian’s amazing climate change reporting, the media here is as almost as divorced from the looming reality of the cascading crisis as is the media back home.
As for regular people - voters who need to be mobilized to consider the climate when choosing a candidate to support and vote for - a spell of cool weather leads to mocking and derision, as folks decide that “it’s cool outside, libtards! where’s your precious climate change now, huh?!?”
We know that local weather is not climate. It varies - and will continue to vary - even as the global average mean temperature continues to rise, the oceans continue to absorb frightening amounts of heat, and sea ice recedes to levels that allow fossil fuel companies and petro regimes to salivate over profits made from exploration in preciously iced-over and inaccessible regions of the globe.
From Pew Research:
Climate change is a lower priority for Americans than other national issues. While a majority of adults view climate change as a major threat, it is a lower priority than issues such as strengthening the economy and reducing health care costs.
Overall, 37% of Americans say addressing climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress in 2023, and another 34% say it’s an important but lower priority. This ranks climate change 17th out of 21 national issues included in a Center survey from January.
So how do we mobilize people to care about, and take action on, the climate crisis? If a small slice of the progressive voices reporting on this continue their excellent work on the science and statistics of climate change, while locally the weather does not reflect the bigger picture (at least for now) then how do we communicate what is happening, and what is at stake?
It seems that the simplest solution is to tie the climate crisis to things that voters in the western world actually seem to care about, like rising food prices, immigration, and the economic impacts of superstorms, washed out bridges, and brutalized infrastructure that is groaning under the pressure of impact after impact from wild weather - floods, mudslides, wildfires, hurricanes, and the like.
Perhaps the answer to driving voter engagement is to to focus on “kitchen table” issues, as political operatives always counsel.
Tie the climate crisis message to unobtainable homeowners insurance, or to disrupted commutes following a highway washout. Find a message that ties the climate emergency to the epic costs of digging out and rebuilding, and the economic disruption that ensues when a supercharged atmosphere unleashes destruction.
Money. Taxes. Unaffordable insurance. And yes, as horrendous as this is to say - immigration.
Americans - well, at least Republican Americans - are terrified by immigration. Do they have any idea of what is coming? No, they do not.
As a progressive, I welcome and champion all immigrants. But the waves of migration that we will be seeing in the very near future will put unprecedented pressure on ou current systems, and will be shocking to many Americans.
From the National Library of Medicine:
Climate change is considered to be the greatest threat to public health in the coming decades, as ensuing environmental variations lead to population shifts [1].
In June 2022, the number of displaced people worldwide reached an all-time high at over 100 million [2]. Although they are temporary, weather-related disasters are increasingly becoming a major cause of displacements globally; according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), they have caused approximately 21 million displacements annually since 2008 [3,4]. The number of weather-related disasters almost tripled in the past 40 years, with their frequency and intensity exacerbated by climate change [2]. According to the “Groundswell – Preparing for Internal Climate Migration” World Bank report, without urgent national and global climate action, South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America could witness more than 140 million people move within their countries’ borders by 2050 [5].
In 2021, the White House issued a report. Its introduction is incredibly stark:
The climate crisis is reshaping our world, as the Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization. Defined by changes in average weather conditions that persist over multiple decades or longer, climate change includes changes in temperature, precipitation patterns, the frequency and severity of certain weather events, and other features of the climate system. When combined with physical, social, economic, and/or environmental vulnerabilities, climate change can undermine food, water, and economic security. Secondary effects of climate change can include displacement, loss of livelihoods, weakened governments, and in some cases political instability and conflict.
In recognition of this, on February 9, 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order (E.O.) 14013, “Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration,” in which he directed the National Security Advisor to prepare a report on climate change and its impact on migration. This report marks the first time the U.S. Government is officially reporting on the link between climate change and migration.
While this is HUGE (and another reason to reelect President Joe Biden!) it is also of import because while the government is talking in these terms, for the most part, climate change communicators are not.
It feels “icky” and racist to talk about immigration in the context of the climate crisis. Those of us who champion a diverse and inclusive United States do not want to talk about climate change refugees as anything other than similar groups of immigrants who are fleeing political persecution, or searching for an enhanced lifestyle in the West.
But we must be honest. The climate crisis will be bringing immigrants to western Europe and to American shores. Their numbers will increase as more and more of the globe becomes uninhabitable for our human brothers and sisters. Telling that story - as well as the story of unsustainable economic impacts brought about by the brutal impacts of a changing climate - may prove to be more efficacious in moving public opinion (and voting patterns) than dwelling on heatwaves and flash floods and the like.
At least we should consider adding those bullet points to the conversation, no?
What do you think?
Remember:
- Asking did not work.
- Voting did not work.
- Marching did not work.
- Emissions keep going up.
- Our leaders have failed us.
#ClimateRevolution