Opinion: We can still beat climate change with fast, furious work

Hot enough for you? Well, brace yourself, it’s going to get worse.

As I write this, an unprecedented heat wave is gripping much of our nation and world. Scientists are saying this could turn out to be the hottest year on record — at least until next year, when it could be hotter.

Scientists have been predicting this incoming disaster for more than a century, since about the onset of the industrial revolution. Or, if you’d rather count the years in which pop culture made us aware, it’s been 17 years since Al Gore released “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won high praise, including an Oscar, from the “liberal elite” while being roundly poo-pooed by pro-fossil fuel elites.

If the opposing sides were animals, it would have been Chicken Littles versus a bunch of ostriches sticking their heads into the sand in denial of what’s coming.

Turns out Chicken Little was right, only it’s not the sky that’s falling. It’s the heat that’s crashing down on us, and it’s just about too late to stop it.

I say this as an optimist. I still think we can at least mitigate the coming disaster.

My favorite solution — or, I should say, my favorite piece of a solution — is carbon capture and storage. That’s when carbon dioxide is sucked out of the atmosphere, turned into a solid and stored underground. It’s not the whole solution, but the idea of literally pulling CO2 out of the air offers hope that technological breakthroughs can help us turn things around.

Of course, the biggest thing we need to do is cut off our reliance on fossil fuels poste haste. If we don’t transition to cleaner sources of energy production today, tomorrow might not come.

Politically, it seems impossible. Climate change deniers still dominate the Republican Party, and while the Democrats are more inclined to face the reality of a heating-up planet, oil and gas money and power keeps them in check. It seems our politicians would rather have a strong economy now than a livable environment for the future.

We talk a lot these days about how our democracy is in danger because of election denial and a loss of confidence in our democratic institutions, but I can’t help but wonder if “We The People” are up to the task of reversing or mitigating the heat that’s coming at us.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this latest heat wave would serve as a great wakeup call? Collectively, we can still beat this, but it will take some fast and furious work. We must make it our top priority, before it really is too late.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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