Some people say they will not vote for the democratic nominee if that person is not the candidate they supported during the primary. A frequent counter to that, which I have used myself, is, “What about the Supreme Court?”
But the real question we should be asking is, “What about the environment?” According to NASA, 2015 was the hottest year on Earth and the second warmest year for the continental United States. Climate change is not going away on its own, and the consequences will be grave.
“It is absolutely essential, if we want to avoid catastrophic impacts of climate change, that we turn this problem around starting now.” — John Holdren, science and technology advisor to President Obama
We currently have two democratic candidates who acknowledge that climate change is real, is a consequence of human activity, and represents a tremendous threat to the nation and the world. Contrast this with the remaining GOP candidates, who deny climate change is real or who claim to know too little to take action. “I’m a politician, not a scientist!”
A GOP president would use his pulpit to convince more Americans that climate change is a political construct invented by the left to attack the right. A GOP president will rubber-stamp legislation passed by the Republican-led Congress that weakens the Environmental Protection Agency and loosens environmental regulations that are too weak now. Already, a coalition of republican governors is fighting in court to overturn EPA rules that tackle climate change. No GOP president would participate in international dialogue to address climate change.
Yet the GOP denials will not stop the inevitable consequences of climate change. As Neil deGrasse Tyson has pointed out regarding science:
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it. Alright? I guess you can decide whether or not to believe in it, but that doesn’t change the reality of an emergent scientific truth.”
Insects, animals, and plants do not let political leanings guide their response to climate change. Thus, insects that benefit from warmer temperatures will continue encroaching northward, bringing along deadly diseases and damaging crops. Warmer weather allows many harmful insects to survive the winter, multiply faster, and adapt faster than we can figure out how to combat them. Persistent drought and wildfires weaken the trees, making them more susceptible to invaders like the bark beetle. Our pets are already suffering the effects of climate change, with flea and tick “season” persisting year-long in some areas. Heartworm and lyme disease are already becoming more prevalent among our dog and cat populations.
John Trumble, a distinguished professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside, said environmental conditions are creating larger populations of smaller fleas and ticks that will eat more frequently, develop more rapidly and spread more pathogens.
Many good diaries on DK have outlined the numerous ways in which climate change threatens our food and water supply. Will everyone be arguing over whether to adopt single-payer healthcare or expand the Affordable Care Act when climate change leaves more people starving and without water? Where will the money come from as tax revenue dries up because of jobs lost in the agricultural, livestock, and fishing industries? Those job losses will have a ripple effect and lead to other job losses.
In Syria, persistent drought from 2006 to 2009—linked to climate change—contributed to crop failures that prompted mass migration of 1.5 million people from rural agriculture areas to the cities. After just 2 years of drought in Syria, reports such as this emerged:
Thousands of Syrian farming families have been forced to move to cities in search of alternative work after two years of drought and failed crops followed a number of unproductive years.
"The situation has now got really severe; we are talking about desert, rather than farming land," said Abdel Qader Abu Awad, MENA (Middle East and North Africa) disaster management coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). "People cannot live in this environment any more and their final coping mechanism is migration."
This mass migration is believed to have contributed to the political upheaval in Syria. Bernie Sanders was absolutely correct when he linked climate change to terrorism. Although Sanders has been more emphatic, Hillary Clinton has also connected climate change to events in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. Yet the right-wing “media” and GOP candidates ridicule the assertion that climate change and terrorism are linked:
STUART VARNEY: Here's one for you. Bernie Sanders, well he's doubling down on his claim that there is a link between climate change and terrorism.
[...]
VARNEY: Alright Mark, climate change?
MARK STEYN: Yeah, he's brilliant that guy. I mean, al-Baghdadi will be sawing Bernie Sanders' head off, and he'll be saying as his neck is being sliced, 'If only we'd had an emissions trading scheme.' This is insane and it shows the level of delusion and denial among the Western political leadership.
Perhaps one of the most important observations researchers offered about the relationship between climate change and Syria’s social unrest is on the extent to which the Syrian government’s “misguided agricultural and water-use policies” exacerbated the problem.
We have a serious drought on the West Coast, where a lot of our food is produced. The drought is predicted to persist. Climate change conversations are no longer confined to its theoretical effects on our children’s children or how sad we are that the beautiful polar bears and other wildlife are dying. Climate change is already threatening the livelihood and food and water supply of many Americans. (If anyone knows how to cut and paste a table, I would love to reproduce Table 1 from this link in my diary; it shows the declines in volume for many fruits and nuts).
We have seen the results of misguided management of our environment under Republican governance, like the earthquakes in Oklahoma and the water crisis in Flint. Flint is everyone’s future under republican leadership.
The importance of who sits on the Supreme Court pales in comparison to the importance of doing something about climate change because without a livable planet, we have no Supreme Court. (However, whoever is appointed to the Supreme Court could help or hinder efforts to fight climate change, and that is critical.)
To those who plan to stay home rather than vote for the other democrat in the general election, will you sacrifice the planet’s future for petulance?
For me, if the only difference you could point to between the democratic and GOP candidates vying for president were that one vowed to take steps to fight climate change and the other denied climate change was real and promised to oppose efforts to fight it, I’d drive through a blizzard to support the democratic candidate. Of course, with the way New Jersey winters have been the past few years, election day may just be a balmy 70 degrees. And that’s not a good thing.