Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Since it’s so hot outside, maybe you’ll appreciate the chilling nature of a recent National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration report, which says there were 18 major climate and weather disasters last year alone. Each one cost at least $1 billion in recovery costs, while altogether they cost us $165 billion.
The U.S. is in its eighth straight year of 10 or more such extreme weather disasters. This year we’ve already had 12, and that’s not even counting the oppressive heat that’s been bearing down on most of the Northern Hemisphere this summer. Compare that to the 1980s, when natural disasters struck an average of once every 82 days. Now, according to the nonprofit ClimateCentral.org. we’re averaging one every 18 days.
Climate change is an economic issue nowadays.
Insurance companies are backing away from California and Florida real estate because they’ve concluded the risks have become too great.
Moreover, it’s now a personal issue for millions of Americans who have experienced a natural/manmade disaster of their own in recent months — and you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll be a big issue in the elections of 2024.
Up to this point, our nation has lacked the political will to take on climate change, so now we’re faced with cleaning up in the aftermath of one extreme weather event after another. There’s still time to mitigate future catastrophes, to offset the worst-case scenarios, but our window of opportunity is closing so fast — and more and more people are beginning to recognize the severity of the moment.
I suppose it depends on how hard extreme weather events hit us between now and Nov. 5, 2024, as to how top-of-mind it will be for the average American voter, but at this rate, it might even eclipse the culture-war issues that embroil us.
Or it could become too much of an emergency to put off until next year. Some Democrats are starting to urge President Biden to take the extraordinary step of declaring a national climate emergency, as a way to accelerate our economy toward clean energy sources.
Through an emergency declaration, Biden could ban crude oil exports and stop oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters.
Of course, if Biden were to declare such an emergency, the opposition would be tremendous — but so would the support, so I’m not sure how that would impact his re-election bid.
Of course, even without an emergency decoration, Biden will be busy with emergency federal responses to the latest disaster du jour, probably fighting with Congress over the billions or trillions of dollars needed to fund FEMA and all the other emergency responders we’ve all come to expect when disaster hits.
Climate change is a game changer, both economically and politically. People are facing the reality of what’s about to happen, and how much worse it’ll be if we don’t do anything. Every other national and/or international issue we face will only be worsened by the natural/manmade disasters that are about to hit, so we’d better face the changes head-on. There is no other issue as pressing as this one is right now.
Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:
