We are long passed any realistic and practical point to turn this ship around. What part of this don't you get?
This is an unstoppable phenomena, moreover, there are serious and very respected climate scientists that will tell you so.
The big thing for the powers that be is not to let the panic set in just yet; there's still money to be made. If you panic the herd too early all is lost.
Who was born in a house full of pain.
Who was trained not to spit in the fan.
Who was told what to do by the man.
Who was broken by trained personnel.
Who was fitted with collar and chain.
Who was given a pat on the back.
Who was breaking away from the pack.
Who was only a stranger at home.
Who was ground down in the end.
Who was found dead on the phone.
Who was dragged down by the stone.
Roger Waters
2
What is more likely
1. "I'm going to vote for Elizabeth Warren because it was really hot this summer."
2. "I'm going to vote for Donald Trump because he promised to bring back the high paying unskilled job my grandfather had."
We're doomed.
4
The Democratic party is too caught up in identity politics to care about the environment. Same with the Nytimes. There is virtually no reporting on countless ecological disasters, like the red tides in Florida. And NEVER any reporting on the connections between consumer behavior and these effects. The Nytimes has a long history of making fun of people who do things like buy organic food, as if the price to the consumer is all that matters. Meanwhile synthetic fertilizer and chemical runoff is destroying the ocean. The ideology is that whatever it takes to save money, the better. So the consumer saves on the front end, and pays (along with their children and grandchildren) on the back end. Congratulations if you saved $1 on your produce. Now future generations will pay in spades for your cheapness. There is no support of the concept of paying higher up front in order to save the environment in the long run.
If politics is going to change, the first step is for the media to change its attitude and ideology. The Nytimes has a very long record of undermining ecological concerns. Yet the paper bought into identity politics 100% and has pushed that agenda relentlessly. Please get the focus off people's genitals and related pathologies and onto our survival as a species.
10
Tom, I completely agree with all you've said but, taking a line out of the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, “the fall is going to kill us anyway.” Accordingly, if our civilization does not die out due to nuclear holocaust, the worldwide spread of some deadly virus, chemical or biological warfare; the effects of Global Warming on our planet will eventually kill us all in the long run. We live on Earth as if its disposable and after we destroy it, we can pack up and move to another planet. That will not be technologically feasible, this is the only planet we have. After all, if we were to take the long view, something human civilization has always failed to do, we must then face the idea that our stay on this planet is transient and microscopic, within the great space of time of its existence. Instead, what we’ve done is taught ourselves to look at things in the present and concern ourselves in planning for the medium term, but never looking at the long term and what kind of environment we will be leaving to our children and grandchildren. When it comes to the love we claim to possess for our descendants, most of us are hypocrites.
8
The Prez needs a health warning label: "Trump may be hazardous to your health".
1
Trump supporters like his wedge issues and anti dark people rhetoric. They love to hear him call everything "fake news". They like the flavor of his koolaid. I highly doubt anything, including death will sway them.
The rich and powerful have an escape route. They want to speed things up so they can have it all. Once the air is clear, they will come out of their holes and enjoy everything without competition. They can then recount how the minions just gave it away over stupid wedge issues, propaganda and racism. There's something in the water? Causes brain damage.
2
Really, Tom? Trump will surely have a second term if you/we don't concentrate on the immediate needs of the voters who put this frightening psycho in our White House. My fellow Dems, this is ours to lose - no far left college-for- all, climate change pc blather is going to win an election in the current zietgeist. Only AFTER we take back our country can rational policies finally be implemented.
5
I guess what Friedman is try to say is that climate change is the mother of all issues.
7
Once again Thomas Friedman makes a brilliant point. Once again it will lead to no where. It is all based on the idea that the Trump base is in touch with reality. It is not. It is also based on the idea that given the forest fire burning right under their noses; the base believes it is because too much water is flowing into the Pacific?! Apparently the rivers never got the memo. I have sadly come to the realization that there is nothing in this (or any other) universe that will penetrate the blind rush to defend Trump come Hell "or" High Water. Too many Americans have completely lost any sense of reason or independent thinking to believe any longer that facts matter in the "Trump Universe." No; the U.S. is now living in some ,"Twilight Zone" of alternative facts; and you thought Kelly Ann Conway misspoke. I have vainly waited for 2 long years to see signs of sanity being restored. Barring a miracle in November; or Mueller "ever" telling the world what he knows; the U.S.S. AMERICA has hit the iceberg and sinking fast to a watery grave. R.I.P. America.
7
Great. Put mother nature on the ballot. And then give me one good reason why she would somehow prefer a democrat. Are they driving fewer cars? not riding on airplanes? using less electricity? Buying fewer cell phones? Democrats claiming the high ground on "saving the earth" is not even specious. It's ridiculous. There is nothing that can be done about climate change...the train has left the station. And gimme a break on the "zero carbon grid" fantasy. Not happening any time soon and you know it TF. It'll happen when the *oil is gone* . Democrats grandstanding about how they apparently care more is a joke.
1
Thomas Friedman is rather late to the argument about Mother Nature.
Paul Ehrlich published "the Population Bomb" in 1968. A few years later, Meadows, Meadow, Randers and Behrens published the results of computer simulations which examined various possible outcomes if population growth on Planet Earth with limited resources.
Some of the computer simulations showed "overshoot and collapse" in which population growth would briefly exceed carrying capacity leading to a subsequent die-off.
These predictions were regarded as the ravings of crackpots and fools by both sides of the political spectrum.
But not by the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. China introduced a one-child policy in 1979. The result has been spectacular economic growth in China, compared to say India, which had similar overpopulation problems.
But somehow, although the NY Times correctly points out the effects of global warming, it will not allow a free discussion of its primary cause, which is population growth.
Why not stabilize population at current levels? That requires that mothers in Guatemala have fewer children now.
Achieving that is a difficult problem. But preventing a full discussion of the role of population growth is a crime against Mother Earth.
We need a stop to illegal immigration in this country. We need a one-child policy in the US like that which China had.
We need to encourage smaller family size.
And the NY Times must stop suggesting that people who oppose growth are racist.
6
Mother Nature was on the ballot on 1980 and I fear this time it might be too late to correct the error we made back then.
On the holiest day of our calendar we read the Book of Jonah which tells us it always correct to do what we should do. It is time to stop the cult of low taxes taxes and small government.
2
I am the erernal optimist, but I find it near impossible to think that humans are not going to destroy the earth. Watching Trump supporters makes me feel like it’s hopeless. There is no interest in anything other than a short term smile. I fear we are doomed.
3
Don't count on the Demcrats to do anything now or ever.They too are tied to the whims of their lobbyist masters and are historically too wimpy and weak to stand up the bullying Republicans and their chaos destruction agenda.
We are like a bunch of chickens fighting for a few pieces of corn when we are going to the slaughterhouse in 5 minutes.
All the warning signs and predictions resulting from over population and the endless burning of fossils fuels have been screamed by so many good people for decades yet no political enitity on Earth has the will to stand up to corporate greed to take the necessary actions to save the planet. The momentum now is too great.
its a great time to buy on the Gulf Coast of Florida, enjoy the beach.
3
Regarding the recent fires in CA... Here we have Americans dead, and many more suffering.
Does our president offer assistance? Look for solutions? Empathize in any human way?
No. Instead of honoring the oath he took to protect all Americans, he uses a disaster as an opportunity - an opportunity to try to score pithy political points about water management.
Disgraceful.
4
The world could soon be uninhabitable, but we're talking about Russiagate and Ocasio-Cortez. We need a new politics.
3
As with most of Friedman's ideas this is a bad one & would be political suicide for the Democrats. Cap & trade, carbon taxes etc are politically dead in the water. Voters don't want to pay more for energy. End of story. Our country isn't moving in this direction.The point of cap and trade is to increase the price of energy. Cap & trade is designed to increase the price of 85 percent of the energy we use in America. That is the goal. For it to “work,” cap and trade needs to increase the price of oil, coal, and natural gas to force consumers to use more expensive forms of energy. President Obama’s former OMB director, Peter Orszag, told Congress that “price increases would be essential to the success of a cap and trade program. The majority of U.S. voters will never go for this. If Democrats start pushing this it will blow up in their face & translate into more defeats in 2018 & 2020. Cap-and-trade is political Kryptonite for Democrats. We have been here before. Cap and trade was a big reason the Dems lost the House in 2010. Look at where the Republican pickups came 19 Seats from the “Rust Belt” from Pennsylvania along the Great Lakes to Wisconsin. The overall reality in that climate change legislation is hard to pass even in good times. It's really a killer in an economic downturn where citizens & business fear higher costs, even slightly higher costs, & may see no concrete benefits. Politicians need to find a better solution. Jobs, Health, Education is the answer. Not this.
2
Even if we in the U.S. don't care what climate change will do to the rest of the world, many other countries care about it a lot. We can continue to be a global outcast. But other nations know that green-energy means a cleaner environment for their people, and they will embrace it. It makes good long-term financial sense. If we don't get it together, countries like China will continue to rake us over the coals (so to speak).
Renewable energy is the future. Any country that does not understand that and behaves irrationally (for whatever reasons) will be left behind economically.
We need to keep the planet habitable for humans. We need to keep the planet habitable for all other species: we need them to survive. We cannot afford anything less.
5
Climate change was a real, live thing when I was a geology major back in the 1980’s. Imagine that!
In the 1990’s, Americans were not experiencing enough severe weather to take it seriously.
In the 2000’s, climate change had become so politicized that my science students thought it was a belief system and not a science. Parents would complain if I taught about its evidence in my class. My own mother, a Fox News addict, did not believe her scientist daughter’s explanations of global warming.
Fast forward a decade, and despite more experiential and empirical evidence, climate change is still politicized. And it is mostly ignored by the TV media. Every news report of fires, heat waves, floods, and extreme weather events (yes, blizzards count too as potential evidence of climate change) is never accompanied by a reporter discussing CLIMATE CHANGE.
Since we are not primarily a nation of citizens who engage in intellectual study, the only way to reach people is by hammering it home in the MSM. Attribution studies should be published in the MSM.
And, most importantly, case must be made for the benefits of clean energy and the costs of staying our present course in terms Americans sit up and pay attention to: The Almighty Dollar.
8
The issue of climate change is an important matter to argue back & forth. Republicans & president Trump (if he's still the president) would likely dismiss it.
The public maybe on the side of Democrats. But the public was against Mr. Trump in 2016. Still he won. Comey probably had a decisive role in 2016. But more than that, the candidacy of Mrs. Clinton in toto made people to vote against her. If she had campaigned slightly differently without too much hubris and with a little humility, she would have won. Or if she had picked Bernie Sanders as VP, she would have won.
It was not Mrs. Clinton's female gender that worked against her. If her demeanor were like that of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, she would have won. It seems nobody could bluntly tell her that her demeanor was quite bad. Another aspect was that she came across as too greedy. If the Clintons had announced they would give away half of what they made to their own foundation, it would have greatly helped.
She/they're okay. It's the country, us, the world are what lost out. Hope Donald Trump won't be reelected & a Democrat would be our next president - my candidate is Mitch Landrieu; Bernie Sanders would be too old when it comes to it. (I don't know what he was doing all these years. He's an exceptionally charismatic, articulate & sincere leader. It's a great loss to the world he wasn't this active earlier)
Amen. The strange thing about all the things needed to protect our plant is that they are all good for business: new products, new services, innovation, new jobs, etc.
Can't understand why Trump wants to destroy us all.
9
Trump is going to launch an initiative for producing coal-fueled cars.
3
This isn't a Democratic or Republican issue, Mr. Friedman; it's an American one. When it comes to seriously dealing with climate change, the blue states are just as bad as the red ones. Just try to discourage fossil fuel consumption in a blue state by significantly increasing the tax on gasoline (by say $3 more per gallon) to cover the costs of switching to a green energy platform. Or stop the buyers of gas guzzlers in their tracks in the showroom with a tax on engine size that makes it nearly impossible to buy that big oversized SUV. Do you seriously think this would fly in a blue state, forcing so-called liberal suburbanites to trade in their gas-guzzling SUV tanks for small cars?
Forget it. Nothing will happen here until we have sudden disasters of the kind discussed by Kim Stanley Robinson in his excellent novel from last year, "New York 2140". And when those sudden disasters happen - e.g. the sudden massive melting of Antarctic ice sheets - it will be too late.
Americans of BOTH political parties just don't want to hear this stuff. They tune it out just as much if they watch CNN as Fox. Just see the article in today's paper about Democrats pursuing local issues as a campaign strategy for winning the House. None of the candidates quoted in this article talks about getting serious about climate change through changed federal policies.
4
Climate change has been here for about 40 years. Today, 100% of our weather is due to climate change. I can’t see how waiting two years will enlighten anyone who hasn’t figured it out yet.
4
The Dems don't have a practical solution to the problem but they can certainly make the deniers look pretty silly.
5
Well our president was seen recommending destruction of windmills by shooting at them!
2
While Rome burns, CCNN and MSNBC ignore it and await Nero's next tweet.
9
What I cannot understand is why so many voters still don't realize that nature is the boss not humans. You can see with your own eyes on the land the hellish scars caused by the industrial revolution.
NASA told us we are in the human connected climate change era and we are still sleep-walking? Look at what is going on in BC today -we are inter-connected.
clihttps://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/apocalyptic-edmonton-wakes-u...
2
@Karen Wills While I agree that we need to change technological choices, I would feel remiss if I didn’t point out that the industrial revolution was the single greatest factor in minimizing human suffering. None of the clean power tech would have ever been invented without going through this phase. 95% of the world’s population would still live in extreme poverty. Millions of people would still die annually from starvation, preventable disease, etc.
@John I am not convinced -what about the incredible suffering of the working classes in the factories and child labor that ensued let alone the displacement of people? I think those literary romantics like DH Lawrence and Wordsworth pointed the way at the time they said we cannot live well without a connection to nature. I think the First Nations with their view that you cannot eat money were far-sighted about the terrible pollution we have poured on the natural world. I can't even go out today cos the smoke is so bad in my throat and neither can my friend in Alberta. I seriously wonder about the future.
Excellent Article, TF! Let's hope & pray the Dems buy into it!
3
Great idea Tom -- the dems will run in 2020 on "we can change the climate", "socialism for all," and that great old standby --"identity politics."
Sounds like a winning platform to me. Now if you can only get a ticket of Bernie and Elizabeth Warren -- you'd probably only lose by about 200 electoral college votes.
2
Mother Nature -- aka Climate Warming and The Sixth Extinction -- will be on the ballot in America's 2020 presidential election. We are witnessing climate-change Armageddon, the extreme realities of weather today. Floods, droughts, heat waves, fires, famine are ravaging the planet that birthed humankind (and all other kinds of fauna and flora, now becoming extinct).
"Climate-change hoax!" is president Trump's dog-whistle to his ignorant base. Trump is touting the use of fossil fuels instead of desperately needed sustainable energy. Human populations have been checked -- in the unrecorded and now recorded past -- by famine, plagues, wars and floods. Our homeland, Earth, is in hospice.
Human activity (the Anthropocene) has degraded our marvelous planet and is killing our homeland in this galaxy. As you posit, Dr. Tom, climate change is the sleeper issue in 2020 -- "green will be the new red, white and blue". But will it matter? It's been a short time since mankind crawled out of the primordial sea-soup. The fittest won't survive in aeons to come.
3
The problem with conservatives on climate change is that they're brainwashed by Fox News and Limbaugh to think it's all a liberal hoax. My brother lectured me a couple months ago that Al Gore made up climate change when he was in college to write a thesis to pass a course ! I wish I was kidding because my brother has a doctorate level degree but watches Fox News daily. So we liberals have to keep showing proof that this earth is burning up but prove it to political independents and moderates because the hard right is lost on this issue.
3
@c-c-g. Liberals are every bit as blind when it comes to population and immigration. The right doesn't have a corner on ignoring the numbers.
2
Oh. So that explains the lib'rul support for Planned Parenthood and WHO efforts to cut population.
2
If Mother Nature is on the ballot in 2020, Trump will tweet, as he does with all women he does not like, that she is a "dog."
3
Whistling in the graveyard, Tom. Every human on Earth could stop breathing right now, keel over dead, and the meteorological gears we’ve set in motion won’t come back to rest for centuries.
4
Is Mr Freidman the pundit who told us that the world is flat and that all would benefit from promoting China's entry into the WTO and accelerating globalization in general?
4
@BD. I think it was "hot, flat and crowded". All of which means we're pretty much doomed.
Tom: If calamitous weather events track into 2020 and Mother Nature continues to weep over the continued destruction of the planet, Trump will simply tweet that she, like other women he does not like, is a "dog" and a "crying lowlife."
1
TESLA must succeed and I'm on the side of Elon Musk.
USA is so short sighted that there is no long range thinking from rich people. He should not be in trouble for tweeting about a buy out. He is virtually the only rich intelligent person advancing humanity VS TRUMP's 100 year leap backwards! We are a sick culture starting with those who put TRUMP in office and that will kill the planet and us.
2
Jeez, what an optimist...
1
the Democrats want to win, but they have no meaningful practical program the voters want, so maybe they can stampede them with fear of the weather: Fires, floods, wind, rain! 'Vote for us', they say, 'we'll get control of all this for you. You want to help save the planet, don't you?'
The Dems never answer the five easy questions: 1, What is the correct temperature for the planet? 2, How do you plan to enforce it? 3, Within what world political structure? 4, At what cost? 5, In what timeframe? Do you remember Glinda The Good Witch in 'The Wizard of Oz', she of the fluty laugh, plastic crown, and pink bubble? That's the Democrats--just wave the wand, laugh, and float away leaving reality to others. 'Oh, vote for us, whatever you wish for, we'll promise it, just vote for us'.
4
Unfortunately, neither Democrats nor Republicans have the ability to alter the weather.
Only God almighty, mother nature's boss can achieve that.
5
@Tuco,
Just keep praying. No action required.
4
I was saddened to hear a coworker tell me the Bible prophsizes that one third of the earth will burn up some day. This person will never vote for Democrats because most liberals don't believe in his book of fables and, instead, he commutes to work in a pickup truck he admits is a gas guzzler. We who think smarter about the planet will never convince these misinformed people to vote for Democrats who will commit to solutions to runaway climate change.
For the rest of us who care: VOTE ON NOVEMBER 6, 2018 LIKE IT'S OUR LAST CHANCE!
7
Nobody -- Republican or Democrat -- has ever proposed the stringent, life-changing environmental rules and regulations that would assure that climate change would not become a catastrophic disaster. You can call the Democratic agenda a step in the right direction or the good college try. I call it lip service. Democrats are politicians and their motivation is political. Their climate change proposals are designed to throw a bone to liberals and embarrass Republicans. Obama's 54 mpg automobile mileage standard was actually 36 mpg when his whole credit program was taken into account. The starting point for his carbon emission goals was 2005, the highest emission year in the history of mankind. By using a contrived starting date, he virtually assured that we would meet his goals without paying a red cent. That's the whole point of the Democratic program -- set misleading goals, enact lip service measures, and create the impression you are saving the world for free. If Mother Nature were on the ballot for 2020 and the wool was drawn from over our eyes, a third party would win.
8
@michjas It’s certainly hard to put a positive spin on the idea of switching people from eating meat to eating algae. I can’t imagine that’s in the Democrat’s platform anywhere.
The best way to get people off of fossil fuels is to create demand. If you incentivize switching to clean energy then people will take to it quickly. Taxes will be resisted and lead to people and companies looking to game the system. The more you transition through voluntary means, the more clean energy becomes the economic choice and the pace of change increases. People will then willingly open their wallet to the best economic choice.
6
What is the solution? A law banning carbon emissions? A tax on carbon emissions? Cap and Trade? Or subsidies to alternative sources of energy.
The only transparent and effective solution in my opinion is taxes. Taxes provide incentives to both reduce consumption and find alternative sources.
Maybe we should start with a number and monitor the results. 50% tax on fossil fuel energy prices. No carbon emission reduction? Climate keeps changing? Try 100%. Did not work? Keep going. And use the money collected to reforest.
2
@Marcelo I am sure that a regressive tax on the poor will be extremely popular.
2
@John You mean people say global warming is important but they don't want to pay to avoid it? But then how will we know that they really think it is important?
There are people that know a lot more about this than I that believe it's already too late. But as a species we have found solutions to a lot of insurmountable problems, so I wouldn't count us out just yet.
We will need every shoulder at the wheel to solve global warming and our other environmental problems (poisoning of the ocean is almost as big a problem that gets a lot less publicity). We don't have the luxury of time or leisure.
There will be displacement and suffering from global warming--crops will fail, water will disappear, lands will be flooded. We already see those things, so we have a duty to mitigate them. And, I suspect that rather than see population increase geometrically, as is commonly predicted, a population crash might be in our future. Diseases and starvation are not merciful.
We can, with the technology we have right now (and the will!) slow the train barreling down the tracks toward us, and by slowing it down, maybe, give ourselves time to find real solutions.
7
at 69, I decided to look at the cost of installing solar panels on our property in order to generate 110% of our electric energy needs. Total cost $65K. Take away incentives and rebates and it's down to $35K. Financing for 20 years (!!) will save us about $5 a month. Assuming I live that long, at age 89 I (we) will be the proud owner of a useless, inefficient and ancient system that cannot be repaired or upgraded without costing a bundle. A better business model is needed unless the energy companies are required to produce renewable energy on behalf of their customers.
6
I agree this is an important issue but can we please discuss getting rid of plastic too.
4
Please! As you point out, Tom, we can retire the canard "We can't attribute any single weather event to climate change." That's baloney! When that obese, hypertensive, diabetic smoker arrives in my E.R. having a heart attack, nobody claims that it "can't" be attributed to those factors.
It's simple physics: we're on our way to doubling atmospheric heat-trapping CO2 levels, therefore ALL weather takes place in that altered physical environment. The statement should be, "Prove that this extreme weather is NOT due to global warming." The burden of proof is on our pollution, not climate science, and the answer is elementary. @citizensclimate.org
9
To my hard-core capitalist friends: green is the color of money.
2
@John Dunlap If as advertised, green energy and tech is now cost effective then capitalists would be happy to champion it. Capitalists will sell anything that can earn a profit. When the tech is actually ready for wide spread adoption, capitalism will spread renewable tech faster than any other system.
2
An important topic, but a losing platform for the Democrats to take unless they want a repeat of 2016. Sorry, Tom!
Mr. Friedman: thank you for writing this article!
2
There can be no question that the only way to responsibly address these climate issues is with Democrats taking control of both Houses. Remember, Senator Inhofe—yes a United States Senator, brought a snowball into the Senate chambers a couple years back as evidence to dispute global warming. And he is a rank and file Republican…….Frightening. Here’s the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E0a_60PMR8
3
Excellent piece.
3
All true and agreed upon even by Republicans. That is, until Trump tells them not to believe in perfectly-valid climate science. However, because climate is something of an amorphous target, Democrats would be smarter to run on hot-button threats that affect us right now: EPA allowing toxic substances in our food and water, degradation of the air we breathe by coal and auto emissions, loss of national parks and forests where we recreate. Imagery of polluted air, dead fish, and natural lands despoiled by the fossil fuel industry all would fit nicely into campaigns of most Democrats.
4
In addition because, as in September 11, 2001, we have lost several heroic firefighters that offered their own lives to protect other human beings and their properties. Good bless all firefighters, friends of everybody. Six of them died in the Mendocino Complex blaze.
5
Our home produces all the energy used by the home and all the energy used by our two electric vehicles. It is totally feasible. California and Oregon will soon be requiring that all new construction be net zero energy ready. Zero energy/zero carbon buildings are being constructed all over the country and have been shown to cost less to own than similar standard buildings. Our non-profit educational organization, the Zero Energy Project (zeroenergyproject.org), provides information for home buyers and builders interested in zero energy homes and buildings, as well as smaller steps people can take to get on the path to zero. Political action may be necessary, but at the right time we all can make choices in our lives that bring us closer to the four zeroes.
7
The point of no return for climate change is believed to be somewhere around 2040. Democrats call for immediate action. Republicans pretty much ignore the crisis. The projected insolvency for Medicare is around 2026. Republicans call for immediate action. Democrats pretty much ignore the crisis. Democrats and Republicans are politicians.The only one truly cocerned about your long term well-being is you.
When we seize control in 2020 and reverse all the climate changing since the start of the Industrial Revolution, let's be really careful not to trigger another Ice Age like the one that just ended.
1
@Albert Edmud Yeah, come 202 we rule the world.
The best bet is to sell the economic benefits of climate change. Quit trying to appeal to peoples sense of altruism, make them see how they can personally benefit, it will lead to the same positive result. It's just human nature, people are greedy...use that.
Also, for the love of God, stop with the identity politics.
5
We need not pause and wait for global warming. It has taken billions of years for phytoplankton to create all life on our planet. It is the begining of the food chain and supplies most of the oxygen we breathe. In my lifetime it has deminished by 40% because it is ingesting PCB laced marine microplastic. The oceans are vomiting up lifeforms all over the world and atmospheric oxygen levels are falling. A 3% drop and its over for us. Think of it as being in a garage with the car running and the door closing, the fumes will kill you before the heat.
9
I again post this list of climate change solutions by the Drawdown organization. Sure there may be some errors and not all solutions are practical
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank
The latest excuse to do nothing is that it is too late. You have a small fire on your stove, do you use the fire extinguisher while calling 911 .. or do you go lay in bed saying woe is me ? Or, do you say, hey I don't' smell any smoke ? And maybe sneak out of your house ?
There will be a lot of solutions (and new problems and factors that make things worse) that will add up to a future that can be good, OK, bad, worse or catastrophic. Some may involve keeping your house a little warmer in the summer and a little colder in winter. Some may involve people understanding that birth control attitudes from the church are no longer valid when we have 8 billion people who want to have sex on a regular basis, many or most of them married.
Engineering, both technical and yes social, and economics, both theoretical for planning and real-time, and a government that is willing to have experts study the truth and to fund solutions and to maybe annoy the Koch brothers .. all this will be part of the solution and the corrections we need to make.
I think the Republican party has clearly shown they want no part of this, so vote in 2018 and then in 2020. Maybe someday the Reps will wake up and become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
3
All the most important issues on the Ballot in 2020 and beyond will be moot if we humans continue to dither on climate change.
6
who wants to bother with all that fake climate stuff when there's real issues to face such as waves of bloodthirsty illegals just pouring over the borders with mayhem and your young daughter in mind? what about Sharia law coming to get you? and don't forget, school prayers, somebody else's abortion, sex fiends dressing as women to lurk in public bathrooms intent on who knows what under their wigs,and strangers' wedding cakes. don't discount the crisis in making the religious subsidize the health and reproductive care of their workers, or that whole crazy notion of supporting heathcare in general and obsolete old folks in particular. and the big ones: taxes and threatening to take the guns I will need to use to protect my little family from our own government.
geesh, climate is noplace on the list of vital stuff to consider when voting. it's a hoax made up for the Chinese by Hillary Clinton and everyone knows it.
now, get out there and campaign!
4
Here in Utah, persistent high pressure associated with a heat wave are added to smoke from both in-state and California wildfires to create air quality problems which have lasted essentially all summer. June and July had only a fifth of normal rainfall. Outdoors, the air is amber and the odor of smoke is the first thing noticeable. Tracking the long-term health and environmental effects (burn-scar mudslides, anyone?) of this summer will be a fertile field for research in the future.
5
There is no such thing as a clean car. Firstly, if one looks at an honest cradle to grave analysis of cars that includes the production and disposal of them, then zero emissions is a lie. Also, cars are utterly inefficient. By their very nature, they create traffic jams, and anti-human cities devoted to the movement and parking of cars. The only type of clean transportation will be electrically powered public transportation. The world's possible new era of clean energy, if it occurs, must also include the end of the domination of the automobile.
2
Thomas, thanks so much for writing that climate change matters, even when we are bombarded daily by innumerable other outrages. There will be no shortage of things to be infuriated about, if we don't destroy our planet first. We need to have leaders who accept responsibility for that outcome if we don't change our course, who will see that it is changed. Not more paeans to "clean coal." Not a Resistance eager to fight "more important" battles, but not this one. What value is there in solving all of our many other problems if we lose our future?
3
The problem is that in the cold November, people may already forget about the horrible heat and hurricanes and wildfires happen in the summer.
1
Thank you, Tom Friedman. We need more articles like this one. The only issue is climate change. As it is a question of survival, it supersedes all others that occupy our lives. Too many Americans are unable or unwilling to weigh the consequences of ignoring the growing threat to the planet from the burning of fossil fuels.
What you have written here is informative in ways that may cause reflection in some quarters where there was little or none.
2
Green Energy means jobs. Plain and simple. Greeen building saved the local building industry. Yes, older builders complained about new regulation, but they new regulation created an industry! Green energy can be our auto industry of the 2000’s. It can take over. Pay people well enough to afford the products they are building.....what a novel idea. This is our future but the “workers” need to do their part and vote in a party who will help finance these industries. Trump loves coal-so what. We support a future where the air isn’t polluted and where the attainment of that goal creates a middle class again.
6
The ideas presented are important but I worry that that they all ignore the fact that we have created a society that is unsustainable not just because of the kind of cars we use and how we produce energy. I’m surprised that we don’t more often make other connections to the current environmental crisis.
-Schools in cities tend to be subpar so families choose to live in the suburbs with two parents who then commute into a city (drive to work).
-Cost of housing and healthy food in parts of this country are so high that it dictates that both parents go to work everyday. Having two working parents isn’t an opportunity for most people but an unfortunate fact of American society.
-Without universal healthcare many people still take jobs that pay low wages but offer healthcare benefits. More people driving everyday to work who might choose not to commute if they had healthcare.
-Minimal maternity and paternity leave for most people mean that those parents are commuting to work everyday while a babysitter commutes to their home to take care of the kids. I wonder what giving all parents leave for a year after the birth or a child would do to reduce carbon emissions.
-What if the work-week was reduced to four days? What impact would that have on carbon emissions, not to mention quality of life/efficiency?
-The incentives to use public transport where it exists is low. What if companies or the government offered substantial incentives to bike, walk or use public transport.
6
Karen ... the Four Zeros are not in conflict with your solutions... they are complementary. Progressive politicians need only adopt a systems approach rather than the single issue approach favored by traditional politicians, especially conservatives, and their handlers. This iPhone demonstrates that people can not only manage complex solutions to complex challenges but can develop creative solutions when empowered to do so with clearly defined goals and objectives.
2
The Four Zeroes could be achieved by nuclear power; they could’ve been decades ago.
2
and, by now, we wouldn't even have to turn on the lights at night because the whole planet would be glowing with radiation.
And not a single concession to reality: you could stop emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow, thus killing billions of people, and the Earth would continue getting warmer for at least 50 years. It's no use expecting scientists to pull out an engineering silver bullet: responsible engineers get very queasy about large scale experiments on the only liveable planet we presently own. Now can we discuss what we can do? Adjust to rising temperatures; it might well be cooling centers, but it will help Americans survive. Move highways back off the coast. Try subsidizing new drought resistant crops. Learn to live, or just move away from, high fire danger areas, and clear that underbrush. Should we build desalinization plants? We can discuss that, but with full understanding of the consequences of higher energy use and changing the temperature and chemical content of the ocean waters near the plants. And don't send lots of American taxpayer money to third world nations which have made a profession of pretending to fight climate change (good example: cutting down the rain forests). Yes, this is a real problem. And the permafrost hasn't even started seriously melting as yet. We have a large country, now let's spend our resources helping us, America, survive climate change. Unless you wish to rend your garments and endlessly wail about the Paris conference and its delusions?
2
Wrong. The actions you suggest do NOTHING to solve the fundamental problem; they are bandaids and, frankly, will divert talent and capital from real solutions.
4
While I thoroughly agree with observations Mr. Friedman, the obvious elephant in the room is overpopulation. While mankind should strive to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible, I fear that it will have little effect if our population keeps increasing at an exponential rate. Simple math teaches us that there are already too many people, and not enough resources. We need a multi-pronged approach that addresses both issues.
20
@FreddyD. Not according to either party, which is why I no longer listen to either on the issue of the environment. If you will fully choose to ignore the number one cause of most of our problems, you can't be part of the solution.
2
The very nature of the problem, that it’s global, means that it’s terrible because most politics really is local.
So the litany of global events that this column lists may have only been politically important at the individual event level, and even then, the focus in most cases is going to be how the local or national government responded to that one particular event. Were the fires put out? Did the local authorities communicate well? Were funds dispersed in a timely and a transparent manner? Were service recovery times reasonable?
Sure, for the comfortable and bored like our columnist here, things happening around the world that he can squeeze into a mega-pattern for a column might be compelling. But for most, climate change just isn’t a big concern. We might suffer one event, but what happens in other parts of the world just isn’t going to concern us as much as issues like the economy or local public safety.
In other words, those forest fires in Sweden just aren’t going to rate as much as this week’s car fires. Why? Because while the former were more widespread, Sweden’s ability to impact the climate is minimal, and the impact of these fires was limited to forested areas. The car fires on the other hand can easily be impacted by the Swedes, via immigration restrictions and law enforcement. And because the car fires were urban events - taking place across Sweden’s three largest cities - it has everyone’s attention.
The Sweden Democrats will outperform the Greens.
1
Climate is a bigger issue throughout the rest of the world than in the US of A because subsistence communities are not as isolated from extreme climate events as comfy Americans, especially Republicans, living in air conditioned homes and working in climate controlled offices and factories.
When America leads the rest of the world follows; when American politicians go nuts the rest of the world begins to worry.
5
@David Bruderly, that's great point. I had forgotten how top of mind the welfare of subsistence communities in the developing world are to most Americans.
I stand corrected! Thanks for pointing this out!
I agree with everything Mr. Friedman says here, except the implication that an appeal to reason will work with the American public.
14
Boomers don’t care about the environment it’s plain and simple. They care only about reclaiming their past weight, looks, and incomes. Why care about the future when the present is all encompassing?
@Jts This Boomer cares deeply about the environment and climate change and is doing everything possible to change our energy system.
14
@Jts
Boomers started the modern environmental movement. Making shallow generalizations about whole generations will come back around to bite you when you get old.
6
The apocalyptic image accompanying this article is wildfire as metaphor for our times. As the planet heats up and burns, so does this nation, in a "center cannot hold" sort of way. The fire spreads, creates its own winds, sends embers for miles, gives rise to more wildfire. The people may fight it, but in the end they will flee. We need one of those heroes who runs toward the fire if we are to be rid of the arsonist in the white house.
9
If climate change were to become a leading issue in the 2020 election, Democrats would indeed own that issue. But despite year after year in this decade of extreme temperatures, drought, rain, wind and other evidence that Earth’s climate is already deranged, the American public does not put climate anywhere near the top of their concerns. What will it take? We are too enthralled by Trump and his collaborators laying waste to government, international relations, truth, decency, and the rule of law to pay attention to the planet’s human habitability vanishing before our eyes.
3
Health care and the destruction of the ACA first and environment a very close second should be the D mantra going into 2018 and 2020.
8
There is no ballot issue regarding "Mother Nature." This is a disinterested physical phenomenon we're discussing. Did it rain on Trump's inauguration because Mother Nature hates all fools? No, it rained because the physical conditions tended towards an increased chance of rain. Laws of nature are self-enforcing and we are incapable of "breaking" them, so there's no "punishment"... only actions/results. Our actions being the only thing we can control, they are the ONLY ballot issues. Putting the results on the ballot is as absurd as the Floridians who started shooting at Hurricane Irma. But sure, let's vote.
Either way, California burns bigger and longer all the time (Trump's "out of water" explanation is pitiful, so don't start with that nonsense). The southeast and Puerto Rico get worsening hurricanes with troubling frequency. What does the term "hundred year flood" even mean anymore? Global biodiversity drops. Record heatwaves swing to devastating blizzards in increasingly extreme cycles. Sea levels rise and the waters become more acidic. And, it goes without saying, people die. We can either be serious about these things or we can giggle at a grown man bringing a snowball to Congress as some kind of ultimate rebuttal while his home state (OK) sets a new record high and record low temperature, first "merely" every year since 2000 and now multiple times PER year since about 2013. Do we chant "jobs, jobs, jobs" as we airlift Texans off their homes?
5
And the Mother Nature argument will go down VERY well with the millennials and Bernie Sanderista's!
2
This past Saturday Glacier National Park in Montana hit 100 degrees. Almost 600 fires are burning in tinder dry British Columbia. Southwest Florida is facing a widespread fertilizer assisted red tide that has been worsening every year, choking its waterways and devastating it's marine life, not to mention it's tourism industry.
Both BC and SW Florida now have declared states of emergency. Meanwhile, SW Florida continues to develop commercial, residential and agricultural projects at a breakneck pace.
Climate change denial, lax environmental laws, and unbridled development are increasingly taking their toll on our planet.
Mr. Friedman is right on the mark, and is it up to us to turf out this administration, (and any local or state administration) that abdicates environmental action and replace it with common sense, forethought, and politicians willing to finally get serious about preserving the only habitable place we have available to us.
11
Would it be possible for Mr. Friedman to mention the best possible way to get out of our climate change dilemma, which is to place a national fee on CO2 energy sources? Citizens Climate Lobby is doing the work to advance this on a bi-partisan basis. Democrats blew it after Obama was elected by pushing a CO2 cap & trade system that lost support because it smelled like a way to make Wall Street rich. A revenue neutral carbon tax with all collected moneys rebated to every tax payer on a per capita basis would provide a powerful incentive for everyone to get out of their gas guzzlers and buy that electric car (or electric bicycle).
3
We probably wont not need the climate issue to beat Trump in 2020. There is almost certainly going to be a recession by then and it is not unlikely, when Trump sees the figures, he will not run for a second term, or , if he does, he will easily be beaten.
4
Most Americans don't care about the environment. How many solar panels do you see on roofs here vs. in Europe? Whilst living there, I knew I would never recoup the costs of the solar installation before I moved on to another house. But like many people there, I did it anyway.
Everything starts with proper education, everything.
We don't need to rebuild America, we need to rebuild Americans.
10
Exactly right.
Democracy is unfortunately reactive rather than proactive, so we must make the most of this terrible fire season with images, stories, cost accounting, science, and all the techniques that catch people's attention and credibility. And this can be done without "smoke and mirrors" but with real smoke of burning forests .
I don't know if affixing accountability or blame will be helpful, but politically I certainly know who to blame.
5
That we didn't have a serious response to gw/cc 15-20 years ago, what is the reason for this? What have Mr. Friedman and others missed in their reporting that we have this situation now? Like controlling gun violence in the U.S., there has been no change at the highest levels of government to take effective action, actually just the opposite, as laws favoring the fossil fuel industry and the domestic sale of lethal weapons are still on the books. What i'm getting at here, there has been little reporting of the harmful effects of climate change in the media which coincides with the maximum financing of political campaigns by the fossil fuel industry and the gun lobby. We now have a majority of elected officials who are in their pocket, and even now media coverage focuses on the corruption of these figures, rather than how bankrupt and harmful the policies are. If we have unsustainable levels of CO2 in the atmosphere--unsustainable to maintain human civilization on Earth as we know it--this is occurring every day, not just when Mr. Friedman or NBC/MSNBC care to talk about it. And in politics, if the alternative to the outright corruption of fixing elections by the Republicans is unions that profit from making roll over SUVs or Democrats tied to coal, from the stand point of saving the planet this is no better.
On top of this, what has been done, such as the Paris Accords, are only half measures. Daily reporting and a concerted effort towards zero emissions is called for.
5
The Republican Party owns this policy failure, both at the federal and State levels. The GOP has controlled the US House for 20 of the past 24 years ... since The Newt took over in 1994. The GOP has controlled Florida for 20 years and when Gov Charlie Crist tried to address this issue, like California, the GOP turned on him like a pack of rabid wolves.
3
Because the extreme and harmful effects of climate change affect all living creatures, it troubles me that the solutions will become a political agenda. Mother Nature is suffering right now. To me, it makes no sense to wait until 2020 to change our lifestyles and economy; thankfully as Mr. Friedman has pointed out, the wheel of renewable energy, electric cars, and a plastic-free environment is turning at a "full-speed ahead pace!"
5
Tom-you forgot to mention the active Weather Engineering program we are being subjected to. In our area (Maryland) that is visibly the cause of most if not all of our bizarre weather. Global warming...not so much. Everybody look up from your mobile devices!
This is why we need to be paying more attention to what 45's administration is doing - not tweeting! This is only one area significant damage is being done to this country. Pay attention to the man behind the curtain!
4
Dealing with climate change doesn't provide much entertainment value for not-so-smart voters. And they rule.
@Jeff Atkinson...It's just a paradox, isn't it , Jeff? I mean, how do you of-so-smart voters explain a situation in which you are outsmarted by a minority of idiots? I mean, if you +5sers can't outfox the far left slope of the IQ curve, how are you going to figure out how to save the planet from yourselves? After all, us deficients didn't invent all of this energy guzzling paraphernalia.
Whether voters know it or not, Mother Nature is on the ballot, now. Hopefully, FlorIda's races for Governor and Senate will turn on it. Because of sea level rise even south Florida Republicans believe in climate change, though not Trumpkin Gov. Scott, who banned the phrase from usage by state employees.
It's not just 2018. Puerto Ricans met climate change in 2017; the resulting disaster -- borne of increasing hurricane intensities and rainfall - became Trump's Katrina. Up and down the Eastern seaboard. we should run his nose in his administration's monumental disaster relief failure.
Climate change is also a security issue, long recognized as such by the Pentagon, though I presume Trump's political commissars will try to suppress such thinking in our military. Climate change and its scarcities already prompted massive migration from the Sahel to Europe, sparking a resurgence of semi-fascist politics.
--------------
Note: There is no such thing as "Democratic" Trotskyism; please re-read Bertrand Wolfe's magisterial life of Trotsky. And why do you have a thing about Social Democrats? In Europe, especially in Germany, the UK, France, Portugal and Spain, they were key to defeating the appeal of Soviet backed Communist parties, because Social Democrats believe in political liberties and helped produce Europe's economic miracle.
Progressives are capable of holding several thoughts of once. They will, I believe, adopt climate change as a major issue.
3
The weather isn't any more extreme than it was in the mid-1800's or the early 1900's.
And Trump doesn't dismiss climate change. He dismisses climate alarmism.
The difference is, the first one is a natural phenomenon that cannot be stopped, and the other is a myth promulgated by the Progressive left that fools believers into thinking that if we all go back to agrarian living tomorrow, it will stop changing.
1
@Objectivist
The best we can do is use predictive science, and if human's have any control over the climate (even if more than 1%), why not take some prudent action?
Suggesting that we invest in and pursue new technologies is not at all the same advocating agrarian life. Just as the progressive left can be foolish, so can dogmatic attachment to ideology on the other side of the argument. (Is not the cultural move to remove hydrogenated fats from diet proving good for reducing heart disease? That it ties to sandal wearing, progressive left culture does not negate it's value no matter what your ideology.)
7
@Objectivist Ayn Rand would be so, so proud...
5
@Sum
The question isn't whether we "invest and pursue". We are investing, and we are pursuing. Technology continues to advance, and as efficiency improvements become affordable, they come to market. In some cases, government subsidizes technologies that are woefully overpriced in the hope that hey will become affordable with economies of scale, or increased adoption.
The question is, whether we allow a bunch of irrational statist-socialist elitists s to force decisions upon the public because "they know better, and the rest of us will just ruin the planet".
So it isn't about good decisions, it's about using fear to advance efforts that cannot be justified economically or scientifically.
For example, who says a little global warming is a bad thing ? Will many in low lying areas be displaced ? Perhaps. But the current natural warming cycle is just getting started and it will happen anyway.
Equally, with a new ice age, people will be displaced south.
Either way, someone will relocate.
I'd rather have it warmer longer, than slip into another Lesser Drya.
My response is, the Progressives can all go jump in a lake. The market will decide what is sustainable in the long term.
If the Democrats want to win in 2020 they should be for free trade and capitalism. Socialism doesn't work.
"Vote for me because I'm not Trump" is not going to work.
The rest of this article is excellent. Trump is trying to destroy the environment. Democrats need to explain why we need to save this planet and how we can do it.
If the Democrats lose again it would be a disaster for the entire world.
2
And, note this--we are PAST a point of no return. Mother Earth cannot go back to being as she was even five years ago, muchless, decades ago. Humans are a species and we'll die right along with the myriad other extinctions.
To stem the surge in the direction we are now headed--uninhabitable planet with whole populations desperately surging across arbitrary political borders--we need to do every last one of these four proposals Mr. Friedman outlines so succinctly and wisely.
I'm going to add #5 that I'm borrowing from Erle C Ellis, U. Maryland writing in NYT a few days ago, August 11th...
#5. "Collectively, we have the potential to create a much better planet than the one we are creating now. So let’s start talking about the better future we want, and less about the future we don’t. It’s about articulating values, and about sharing, fairly, the only planet we have with one another and the rest of life on earth. The planet we make will reflect the people we are."
To get to #5 we absolutely must first navigate through Mr. Friedman's #1-4, and fast, or even more damage is guaranteed and of a magnitude to make border walls, tariffs, left, right, ICE, and on and on, laugh points in some cosmic black comedy.
5
We need to get real about championing the earth beyond our own short term pleasure. A vote for Mother Nature is a vote for your kin's own future, and we are one big family.
11
Well, the Dems aren't off to a good start. Last week the DNC decided they will now accept donations from the fossil fuel industry.
4
Trump voters won’t be swayed until this affects them in their own backyards, the regions you’ve mentioned are either outside the US or in states that went blue in 2016. May need to wait another decade or so until presidential swing states also suffer from increased global warming.
“How about I bake Europe, set the biggest wildfire California has ever seen and more active wildfires — 460 in one day — than British Columbia has ever seen, and also start the worst forest fires in decades in Sweden, even extending north of the Arctic Circle where temperatures this month reached 86 degrees. Meanwhile, I’ll subject Japan to the heaviest rainfall it’s ever recorded, and then a couple weeks later the highest temperature it’s ever recorded — 106 degrees in Kumagaya, northwest of Tokyo. And for a punctuation mark, I’ll break the heat record in Death Valley, reaching 127 degrees, and burn the worst drought in living memory into Eastern Australia, where the BBC last week quoted a dairy farmer as saying, “It’s gotten to the point where it’s cheaper to shoot your cows than it is to feed them.”
3
In reality, no solution to climate change can succeed without addressing its primary cause: human population growth.
11
@Dave. For the democrats that means dealing honestly with immigration as well. Not going to happen.
1
We already have to reinforce the 25-30 regulations for clean air and water quality, worker safety, construction site safety and clean ups, that Pruitt undid before he was chased out of office. He broke environmental laws he was supposed to enforce as well as made inroads to grievous ethic breaches. Just another white wealthy male trying to live off taxpayers' money.
Trump, Pruitt and Zinke all need to be removed now instead of in 2020. They are so blinded by dollar signs and ignorant about climate changes that they won't get the message until each of them has to zip himself into an environmental suit to go outdoors. That day is not far off although Trump is at the shorter end of his lifespan at 73 so it may be his current family members who will need protection from the environment they laid waste to. The rest of us should not pay for their sins.
Mother Nature has the last word always.
4
Probably NYT needs to have/show a basic world chart of main Climate Change effects by year in order to se all what is happening around the globe- may be once a month. We dont get the full impact since we are only seeing our inmediate sorroundings- only....not enough to get really nervous!.
4
It was, I believe, Bobby Jindal, disgraced ex-governor of the Creole State, who pinned the derisive moniker "party of stupid" on the GOP.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue's current occupant is trying his damnedest to live up to it.
2
If only. Someone’s got to wake up. Greens and Dems should work together. Planet first.
2
Mother Nature may not wait until 2020 for us to have impeached the most destructive president in history. If such an ignorant and immoral creature is allowed to persist in his childish and dangerous ways we will only get further from saving ourselves.
2
Mr. Friedman, you have the mind of a statist. Did it ever occur to you that the problem isn't climate change. Rather it is government, and for all the problems you point out, tasking government to ameliorate them is like asking the USPS to produce a profit. It ain't goinna happen. Government is the wrong vehicle to deliver the mail or fix the weather.
Right now you have Trump screwing things up. Do you think Bernie Sanders could do better? Bernie's a socialist! Would he reverse the build up of CO2 in the atmosphere without crushing individual liberty in exchange? Socialists Chavez and Maduro expunged freedom from Venezuela in order to implement "social-welfare" reforms? No doubt Bernie would have to go further to reform the climate.
Who in government will you task with fixing the weather? Will it be the CIA, TSA, ICE the Army Corps of Engineers, or the Bureau of Indian Affairs? American Indians, over who the government has exercised more power and control than any ethnic group, have all of the pathologies of the most backward third-world countries.
WW I, WW 2, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and the Tokyo firebombing, are examples of what governments have done to the environment. I might be dumb enough to task the federal government with fixing the climate if it had demonstrated sanity by eliminating its nuclear stockpile sufficient to exterminate life on earth.
Your misguided faith in the state is worthy of any religious cultist.
1
Climate change is a non-partisan issue. Even my father a “Rush is Right” ditto head believed the climate was changing because of humans. And as Mr. Friedman pointed out, we have the technology, resources, and innovation to do something about climate change right now. If Democratic candidates get out there and passionately support renewable energy and stress all of the benefits resulting from the reduction of carbon emissions, they will win in 2018 and 2020.
3
Well Mr. Friedman, thank you for pointing out this much-needed message on the inescapable truth about global warming and U.S. politics.
I would encourage readers who haven't done so to view: "Before the Flood," an incredibly comprehensive documentary (yes, another one!) on global changes due to carbon-based living.
One simple political approach to stemming the rising tide (pun intended) of apathy or feelings of helplessness is an organization devoted solely to introduction on a national scale of a carbon tax on producers and users of carbon-based energy , with the novel idea of rebating monies from this tax to consumers. Check out the Citizens' Climate Lobby webpage!
As your article so clearly points out, folks are engaged already in innovation whether through earth-friendly businesses in solar or zero carbon industries, all the way to lifestyles which invite exciting new ways of eating, driving, and shopping.
Let's not wait until 2020, but immediately implement these positive changes by including the biggest influence on global and human health: 2018 P0LITICS--and let's insist that "green" candidates become the ONLY slate of folks to represent us. If now now, when?
1
Yes! But don't build the messaging around Zeros. Talk about "free" and "clean" instead: Carbon-free grid, emission-free vehicles, clean buildings or free-energy homes, and waste-free or clean manufacturing.
5
Our life support system is in peril. We need a Manhattan project to save ourselves. As others have mentioned, Mother Nature is in charge. The energy balance of the planet is out of whack. We will be really sorry if nothing is done (Humanity wipes itself out). A tragedy in the making. How will it all unfold?
1
I have been flabbergasted recently to realize how few people know what the situation was in Great America before the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. I grew up in The Motor City where the steel, auto and petrol-chemical industries treated the Great Lakes and riverways as personal sewers and many of those waterways were literally fire hazards, not to mention toxic and non-potable. It seems a year cannot go by still where another mid-west locale learns that their public water is actually killing them.
Just as we know how Corporate America will vote over economic long term issues, given no constraint, we have lived how they will behave compelled to eliminate protections for short term economic gain.
Economies recover. Maybe Planet Earth eventually could recover. Eventually. But IF that happens, that will be long after humans and most known animals and other living things have died off.
Those of us that were here for the last rounds of these things need to remember the true and the facts and share them honestly and passionately!
4
I share your concern about the lack of response to climate change in the USA. But you need to remember to follow the money. There are certainly fortunes to be made and lost preventing global warming. But the really big bucks are to be made in mitigation: moving cities and infrastructure above rising seas; hardening inland communities against extreme temperatures, drought and storms; and replacing oceanic and terrestrial food resources. And the worse it gets (i.e., the longer we delay) the more there is to be made by our big design-build firms; the construction industry and big agribusiness.
5
Climate and environmental issues should be on the front page of the Times every day, not relegated to the Science and Opinion sections. Perhaps then people would start paying attention.
Not just the Times, of course: as many media, national and local, as possible. Although it might be a bit hard to get the rightwing media and Fox to go along with this.
I don't know how the "social media" work, never having used them myself. (And at 76 I don't consider it necessary to start.) But could they be used to spread important climate and environmental news as well? Apparently that's the way to reach and influence the most people.
2
Yes. Jill Stein for prez.
I'm all for protecting the environment. Getting plastic out of the ocean. I'm all for lessening our dependence on fossil fuels for the electric grid over the long haul so we can stretch the finite fossil fuels we have and use them where they add the most value.
But what the US does re CO2 emissions has little impact on global CO2 emissions. Our per capita emissions declining while emerging economies keep upping per capita and total emissions. We are 5% of the world's population -- and the emerging economies + Africa account for roughly 12x our population. What we do domestically won't reduce global emissions.
If the US continues it's decline in per capita emissions, Europe and other advanced economies stay flat -- that's great. Meanwhile, the ROW will keep ramping up total and per capita emissions so that any savings we make will be swamped. At this point, if you believe emissions are a big problem, instead of using global warming as something to push your partisan views domestically -- focus on the ROW -- the emerging economies.
Ask yourselves if Obama, Al and Leo thought the PA was so important, why did they let emerging economies off the hook? Because it was merely a photo op and setting your hair on fire because Trump justifiably pulled us out is ridiculous.
And good luck on the 4 zeros. How many decades do you think that will take? Meanwhile, China and India will have at least doubled their emissions.
1
@Ralphie
We can't deny that we've been polluting left and right while emerging economies had no say in it. This country is car crazy and has been for a long time, way longer than the citizens in emerging economies have been able to afford a car.
They're just following in our steps and we haven't been a good example.
1
Mr. Friedman is preaching to the choir. AGW is a complicated issue, especially in relation to weather. Only complex analysis yields any evidence to their relationship, an issue most non-climatologists, let alone the public, don't comprehend. The extremes of this summer will soon be forgotten by 99% of our population (and probably 98% by November elections), and with the likelihood of extreme cold snaps this winter again fostering mockery by the deniers and their backers (just remember the igloo republicans built for Al Gore during a cold snap a decade ago). Science issues, even complex ones like diseases, drug safety and smoking have stayed blow the radar as national election issues. I expect a similar fate for AGW. Even if 2019 and 2020 turned out to be a bit more extreme, Trump and his backers will find a way to dissuade the voters relevant to their survival from believing the apocalyptic scenario of a near future global disaster. I wish it weren't so, but a democratic strategy centering on education, health care and decent paying jobs is a more effective approach. I am not saying that the global warming issue should not be raised, it definitely should, but it must be targeted towards a more informed community of voters that may be fence sitters.
1
Agreed. However I think that solving climate change would be an easier feat to accomplish than making the Democratic party "the party of strengthening the working class and American security."
The Democratic party lost its favor with the working class and rural America a long time ago. And given the far left's well-intentioned but highly fractured focus on social justice issues, it's a long way from gaining traction again where it counts most ... people who actually vote.
Until this changes ... or a viable Independent candidate can capture America's attention ... get used to another four years of Trump.
2
Mr. Friedman is right to mention the loss of American auto dominance and profitability during the last century. The U.S. companies kept producing heavy, polluting and expensive-to-run cars and the Japanese came in with smaller, cleaner and cheaper-to-run vehicles and ate GM and Ford's lunch. One can only hope that GM and Ford remember just what went wrong the last time they failed to listen to the world. "Buy American" didn't work last time and it won't work in the future. Look at Walmart--a huge retail chain built on "don't buy American" and they are doing great.
2
Mr. Friedman, while I agree with you 100%... I do not believe the Democrats have the courage or integrity to accomplish messaging the idea, albeit absolutly correct and necessary, that we have crossed the point of no return and converting to green is a now or never stuation.
I would love for the Democratic Party to proved wrong.
1
@Songwriter Last line supposed to be
I would love for the Democratic party to prove me wrong.
"What if Mother Nature Is on the Ballot in 2020?"
Like any other issue, for environmental concerns to be on the ballot in 2020, the US public needs to hear a highly convincing and compelling case. That requires spending much time and resources by democrats. In the past, the environmentalists' crusades have been countered successfully by misinformation campaigns of US multinationals. These powerful forces are still active and now have an ally in the White House that has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and will spare no effort to maintain its anti-environment position.
The fires in California have undoubtedly awaken a few republicans there and is bond to change some votes. But the fact is California has been sending democrats to Washington any ways. And, when it comes to bible-belt states, it is doubtful that what happens in "Hotel California" could change any voting pattern there.
Mr. Friedman has a point and many agree that those voting in 2020 should have "Mother Nature" on their minds. But, the question is whether environmental issues can have as great an impact on 2020 voters as the grave issues surrounding Mr. Trump's domestic, economic, and foreign policies can do.
Mother Nature better be on the ballot. Here in Michigan I am sitting here looking up at smokey skies from CA. fires. Carbon Monoxide is heavy among the west coast.
1
I'd like the commenters the nyts or mr friedman to explain how we can have a meaningful discussion of the environment and not address the u.s. and the planets population, immigration and birth control? Talking about reducing our co2 footprint and not talking about the numbers of humans producing the co2 may be PC but it's logically and mathematically a waste of time and hypocritical.
2
@Al
Reducing population growth, and reducing consumption. Our life style is unsustainable. The notion of the desirability of "economic growth", based on constantly increasing production and consumption, is what got us into this mess in the first place.
What's urgently needed is a) a drastic reduction in consumption in the affluent west, and b) a more equitable distribution of existing goods and resources, not just on a national but on a global scale. But that would require an altruistic mind-set. I think we might as well resign ourselves to being a failed species. Perhaps in a few million or billion years, after the planet cools down, another intelligent and less self-destructive life-form will come along.
@Ellen Valle No, what is urgently needed is birth control/education in Africa.
Trump and Republicans are behind the times for sure. Whether or not a person believes in climate change is nearly a non issue. It is clear that people vote against their best selves and positive change. They see their own lakes, rivers and streams they see the smog in the air they can see that everything is changing around them rapidly. But still they vote for people such as Republicans. Perhaps it will be different next time around. I certainly hope so; but when news of a scandalous book by Amorosa - a reality TV star, another grifter - is on the front page of the New York Times I dont think most of America is willing to make the changes needed. Live in trash die in trash. It’s like America is addicted to reality TV so much they elect their leaders off a TV show - Oh wait they do - Fox News.
3
In last instance the pursuit of the Harvey’s four zeros goal and structural change depends upon each human who takes responsibility for not only an ecological life style but also a socially and economically sustainable lifestyle. It is the integration of ecological, social and economic sustainability that is to be humanity’s ultimate goal.
One way of pursuing this three-dimensional sustainability goal with its monumental challenges is to use the international money system to confront the looming climate catastrophe by basing it on a specific tonnage of CO2e per person. Though a good number of people are engaged in voluntary simplicity, the climate reality demands government action to make each person responsible and response-able. What such carbon-based international monetary system could be like is presented in Verhagen 2012 "The Tierra Solution: Resolving the climate crisis through monetary transformation" and www.timun.net where its conceptual, institutional, ethical and strategic dimensions are discussed.
A social climate specialist and noted economics author declared about this monetary approach to climate: “The further into the global warming area we go, the more physics and politics narrows our possible paths of action. Here’s a very cogent and well-argued account of one of the remaining possibilities.” Bill McKibben, May 17, 2011
As others have said here, you are very naive.
Those in power will not allow the changes you suggest. People like reproducing and that urge will kill us all with time.
Exponential growth of the human population will soon be horrendous and do what all exponential growth does; cause sudden crashes of all systems that grow in that mathematical fashion. Our fossil fuel wastes moving into the air will simply speed this up.
Doomed.
1
This is all true and sounds great. But, wasn't mother nature already on the ballot in 2016? Hilary was not the greenest, but the difference was stark, and yet....
3
Climate Deniers are in denial not just about climate change. They simply can not think anything but NOT ME, NOT MY FAULT. Fine friends but you can do something to make the climate better, oceans cleaner, etc.
And well yes voters you can do the same starting in November.
3
My two greatest global fears for the past thirty years? Global warming and the Mencken prophesy. So it goes.
Wasn't The Ice Age and The Population Bomb the issue 30 years ago? Oops that was 40 years ago. The American public actually pays attention and notes discredited pseudo science. Relax.
@Sela. Tell the disappearing species and oceans that the human population bomb is not real. One of the few great extinction events in the planets history is happening right now and it's bring caused by humans.
But Tom, Trumpublicans hate the truth. They don't want anyone, including Trump himself, to tell them the truth. And the alt right attack machine, paid for by the Koch's, is still there and with even more money after the republican tax cut for billionaires bill passed and signed by Trump.
So, here's my prediction. The evangelicals will give Trump cover by proclaiming that the weather is bad not because of Climate Change, but because God is punishing the country for illegal immigration and abortion and gays and equal pay for women and gun control and lack of religious belief in the evangelical religion. Count on it.
VOTE OUT ALL REPUBLICANS
6
I like it! Call it the Five Zero Plan, using the smart Four Zeros Friedman lists:
Zero Carbon Grid
Zero-Net Energy
Zero-Emission Housing
Zero-Waste Manufacturing
and one more for 2020:
ZERO TRUMP.
4
The Space Force will find us new and better planets, free from immigrants and also Hillary Clinton.
3
I'm not optimistic about us turning this around, even if we started tomorrow. From all I've read, we're 10 to 20 years behind already, and if some tipping points happen with temperature of the oceans, as well as levels of salinity, along with the percentage of carbon still being released, there's nothing we can do to stop catastrophic consequences. Fish stocks collapsing, droughts, fires, pestilence, etc, etc. They were telling us 40 years ago, but not enough listened, and the siren's song from the offending industries lulled the rest to sleep. Waking up is going to be a bummer, man.
5
Mother Nature is taking revenge o us all because we allowed the election of her candidate, Al Gore, to be stolen.
11
Mother Nature is a cliche. Try using nature instead.
If some 40% of the US electorate is in the thrall of a narcissistic serial liar, and some 50% of it stays home during a presidential election, it hardly matters who or what is on the ballot.
2
Trump voters repeatedly vote to take away their own health insurance. They vote to give massive tax cuts to their overlords and unfathomable deficits to their children.
They vote to empower a vicious racist and misogynist who lives to bully (except where Putin's involved) and doesn't have a friend in the world. Do you really think they care if the Earth is destroyed?
Everyone else needs to vote Democratic this fall.
7
What a perfect time to hear from Al Gore again!
1
We can only see the "tip of the iceberg" that is impact of climate change.
For a look at what may well face the denizens of this planet in the not-too-distant future, I recommend reading "The Ends of the World." The author, Peter Brannen, steps the reader through the science and history of the past five mass extinctions our home planet has suffered, the worst of which was at the end of the Permian Period, some 250 million years ago. This period is sometimes referred to as "The Great Dying."
It appears that climate change, caused by disruption of the carbon cycle, led to the death of almost all life on earth five times in the past. Today we are pumping CO2 into our atmosphere at a rate estimated by some scientists to be 10 times the rate at the end of then Permian Period. This does not bode well for the future of the human species.
Sadly, as a species, we do not seem to be able to grasp the enormity of the disastrous consequences that await our descendants if we continue to use fossil fuels for energy, the basis of our civilization.
Mother Nature doesn't need to be "put on the ballot." She is already there and will chose the fate of our species with or without our help. We should do everything we can to help her make a decision that favors our long-term survival.
8
The Greens just gave the Republicans Danny OP'Connor's Democratic seat in congress. You might at least mention the destructive effects that a third, green party will have in the close 2018 elections. At the last moment, Ralph Nader could have given us Gore instead of Bush. Third parties, whether Green or Socialist, are pure , well, just pure.
6
Dear Mr. Friedman, we share the same birth year, 1953.
I remember watching the TV news with an older friend (she was at least 70 years old) in around 1978-9 in Menlo Park. There must have been at oil spill reported on the news. I commented to her something like "it looks like this is a environmental crisis we might be entering." She responded: "we are now living in a permanent environmental crisis." That was an entirely new idea to me to see the environment in that permanent state.
Our generation has been the first to ONLY know environmental crises our whole lifetime (Rachel Carson's works existed when we were teens).
Think how there is no longer free and open wilderness. All wild animals in Africa are somehow enclosed. The patterns of migration across the globe must change not just because of human encroachment but also due to climate change.
But back to us American humans, I agree with you, and it would be an answer to my prayers if the Democrats would take on the mantle of climate and environmental protection and convince the American people of the truth and how deadly serious this issue is. Americans can no longer bury their heads and deny. They must wake up and take the global lead. Democrats must facilitate that.
3
If we are now into the feedback loop of Climate Change, the results will be devastating and undeniable by anyone.
That said, everyone will be pushing an agenda on Climate Change. The question becomes....which agenda (carbon and consumption tax, renewable support, sustainability regulations, less-is-more, local-first, etc etc) becomes the winning agenda. 2020 is the last year that any question will remain. After that, the race to be the MOST green will be on.
1
Tom Friedman once again makes us think about the most important topic of our time- saving our planet. As a climate scientist, the one variable he misses, is the one we cannot solve-human nature. People and Society will simply not change until the water is up to their neck and rising. It has been 30 years since we were all made aware of the threat to our precious earth from climate change. We all thought the consequences would be in the next century leaving our children and grandchildren to suffer from our greed. The new euphemism is that the floods,fires and draughts are the "new normal". What we don't realise is that we could be in a "nonlinear" phase of change, not a "new normal". Every year will possibly become exponentially worse than the previous one. This means we could see catastrophic consequences in the next few decades. Tom, we cannot wait until 2020. And believe it or not there are societies (the Nordic countries for example) that we could model our economic-political system after to begin a fight for survival.
2
If there are two issues for which the level of interest is low outside the ranks of committed Progressives, they are immigration and climate change. The Democrats can gratify their followers and minimize their chances of returning to office by featuring those in their campaigns.
Climate change is particularly toxic for them because, if they succeed, the electorate is going to expect clear results four years later, and those are very unlikely to emerge in the short term.
I agree. But part of the strategy to win GOP hearts and minds is to discuss how to reconcile the govt. regulation and taxes required with their arguments for free market liberty. The more Dems can acknowledge this ideology on the right, and respond to it, the more voters they will convert, and not just on this issue.
1
What should be on the ballot in 2020, and 2018 for that matter, is democracy. As Barack Obama put it in his farewell, the very institutions supporting our democracy are in trouble. We are plagued with gerrymandering, voter suppression, huge amounts of dark money, a partisan Supreme Court that is being packed via extra-constitutional means. Trump won in 2016 because too many people are absolutely fed up with a government that no longer represents or is accountable them. News flash: He won't be fixing it.
So before we get to address climate change, health care, fair taxes, and so on, we need to repair democracy itself. The party that admits that we have broken it and commits to structural reforms could capture the mindshare of a whole generation of voters. Structural reforms include banning dark money, changing the rules in Congress to give the minority a voice, restoring the voting rights act, and amending the constitution if needed.
2
@Ken L When there is no water, the thirty will follow anything for a drink....even a mirage. Democracy might be a victim of Climate Change, for better or worse.
3
@Ken L
Couldn't agree more. One has to wonder what does it take to get our government to do something even remotely close to benefit the people and the country?
Politicians get elected but have no intention on fixing anything. It's the same ol' same ol'. Democrats, Republicans does not matter. None of them has any spine nor integrity.
It is not just Trump, it is the entire republican party and their big donors. Folks like the Kochs don't want spend a single red cent to clean up the messes their manufacturing and energy production create.
I think the democrats should run on "rid the planet of single bottom liners, support candidates who believe business should not only be profitable but socially and environmentally responsible. Up with the triple bottom liners."
4
The right message with the wrong end. Friedman is still trying to persuade the center. At least forty percent of the nation isn't going to vote on climate change as a single issue. I don't care how you package the message; there's a large demographic who are not persuadable. You shouldn't waste your time.
However, there is a good argument for including climate change in the Democratic platform. Namely, you'll quiet the Democratic center who are always complaining about Green party "spoilers." If you put environment in the forefront, along with all the other major issues, Green party candidates lose traction in the electorate. There's nothing to run against.
That part is easy. The real threat to Democrats however is a legitimate anti-Trump Republican in the race. If you have a right-leaning independent on the ballot, all those center-right voters you hope to persuade are going to split the anti-Trump vote and hand Trump another term. Disgruntled conservatives get to register their protest while keeping their party in power. I'm warning you: Watch out.
1
There's no doubt about it. Mother Nature will be on the ballot in 2020. Especially for voters are in one of those states now being afflicted by raging wildfires, and the devastation caused by them.
In the case of California, they already took the lead by defying Mr. Trump's belief that climate change doesn't exist by threatening to sue him and big oil companies; and last year its Governor, Jerry Brown, even went so far as to sign an agreement with China (of all places!), to work together in finding cleaner renewable technologies.
As one of the states with the largest economies, California also has some of the strictist climate control laws in the land, and China is the #1 user of coal on the planet.
And California is not alone. All together 17 states have filed a legal challenge ahainst the U.S. Department of Energy over its efforts to abolish or shrink Obama-era climate change regulations. A move that became all the more vital when Mr. Trump also signed an Executive Order to rollback the Clean Power Act requiring states to reduce carbon emissions from power plants.
That said, it's more than likely that those who have been listening and watching higher temperatures, fires, and droughts consume the world will have that in mind when it time to vote.
At least, let's hope so. Because time is no longer on our side.
7
As other commenters have noted, we can't wait until 2020 to use this as a campaign issue, which means the policies would not be implemented until 2021 at the earliest. Two things have to be true: 1) there is a limit to the heat we can withstand and still survive as a species; and 2) there is a limit to the number of humans planet Earth can sustain. Maybe our concerned leaders need to take a page from the Trump playbook and use fear and hyperbole to make the point that we must take action to mitigate climate change NOW. I think of Thanksgiving roast turkeys with their brown, crispy skin and contemplate that that is what will happen to all of us if we don't do something about climate change. Secondly, if all those people who call themselves "pro life" were really pro life, they would support widespread distribution of effective contraceptives, so that we don't overpopulate the planet and start dying off for lack of adequate resources, which is a horrible way to die.
4
Mr. Friedman is absolutely right...and wrong, about climate change as in issue in 2020. Trump supporters could not care less what happens in a blue state like California, and recent polls indicate they could not care less about what happens in other countries. We continue to attack Trump policies that are harmful to the environment, put a colossal tax burden on our children, encourage racism at a level not seen since the early part of the 20th century and make a mockery of the Presidency. And yet his approval rating remains the same or better! The Democrats need to show how these policies are hurting his constituency, not the rest of the world. So far, the Democrats have failed to make a dent in his support.
2
Its an open net! The republican party has abandoned the goal on this one and if democrats don't score in every election it would be a shame. People may be able to decry what they see on tv or their social media feeds as fake. But what is happening outside is undeniable. Obama was a wise president who said that climate change was the national security issue of our time. I believe that. I hope that people start voting this as a litmus test issue. Trump and his acolytes will be crushed trying to defend pollution and regressive energy policy.
5
Even if Trump ever agreed with virtually the whole world, it is doubtful that huge swathes of Americans would want to sacrifice there narrow and relatively comfortable lives. There would have to be some type of apocalypse to make them come to their sense. I can't help but think of that phrase 'Make America Great Again' (whatever great means in this context) is going to sound oh so sad and insignificant in a year or two. Have a nice day Y'all.
1
Here are the facts well known in the scientific community:
Back in 2012, the World Bank warned that resultant high temperatures from CO2 could trigger what is called a Methane Hydrate Feedback Loop in the Arctic. Scientists are now telling us that this has already begun. Recent temperatures in the Arctic have been the highest in recorded history.
This could lead to Permian extinction event like that of 252/250 million years ago when 81% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate species were destroyed.
So here is the question: We about to face a test of our biosphere vulnerability; why is there no outcry?
www.InquiryAbraham.com
6
I do not agree that green is the new red, white and blue - it's simply the new red.
I wish Mr. Friedman would write about how anti-Green NY Gov Cuomo is and how anti-Green California is:
Cuomo wants to close the perfectly good Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant that provides one-fourth the electricity for all of NYC and Westchester County and replace it with greenhouse generating natural gas plants. One of those plants is so polluting, that they have been unable to get a license for that fact. Exactly how is that being green? Well, it isn't.
Meanwhile in 2013 California closed down the San Onofre nuclear power plant and in a few years it will be closing down its last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon.
It is clear that California does not care about greenhouse gas emissions since it is closing down nuclear power plants.
I hope the NYT and Mr. Friedman interview Cuomo and ask him what he has against the environment to increase our air pollution. He should speak to California as well asking them why they are anti-green. Perhaps by doing so, he can save two import nuclear power plants so that we can have cleaner air and less greenhouse gas.
1
@David MD, As with the buildup of CO2, the cost of cleaning up after nuclear power only mounts with time. Every nuclear plant in the US is a temporary waste storage site.
8
@Steve Bolger
Actually, former Democratic Sen Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is responsible for the local storage of nuclear waste, so it was the abuse of power of a powerful Democrat to have the nuclear wastes stored locally.
The government is supposed to be storing that nuclear material in a prepared site in Nevada.
Now that Harry Reid is gone, we can start shipping that material to Nevada.
If you believe greenhouse gas is wrong, that carbon-based air pollution is wrong, you should not be shutting down nuclear power plants. It is really that simple. I look forward to Mr. Friedman writing about the anti-green governor of NY and state of CA.
Maybe the silver lining in the disaster that is Trump will be that he galvanizes enough people in opposition that we finally get serious about solving big problems.
5
One of the problems I see is that as soon as the bill for the change required comes due, in the form of lost jobs in obsolete industries, such as fossil fuel, you create a disgruntled class of workers (coal miners) who, in an electoral college system, can swing an election. All you need is a bombastic, liar like trump throwing matches around. Without some kind of social intervention such as a guaranteed income that would require a distribution of wealth through appropriately applied taxation you will never be able to get any kind of national consensus to do the things we must to mitigate the harm we have already wrought. Republicans and their corporate allies have already shown themselves more than willing to throw the entire planet under the bus in order to eek out a few more years of wealth and power. I am sure they think that their money will insulate them from harm, just as people thought it would shield them from the plague. The world is burning while Trump, McConnell, Ryan and the rest smile smugly and pat each other on the back for manipulating the system to achieve what in the long term will be completely inconsequential, Ozymandias! Right now I am reading Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly it makes one want to weep. They have pulled the Trojan horse of climate change inside our gate against the best advice and are drunk with the wine of hubris.
4
YES - I already thought that after Katrina people will wake up. I thought the same after Sandy + the wild variety of super-size disasters. - but it sent some citizens praying and sending money + best wishes.
YES - Bernie Sanders named Climate Change the biggest security risk in the first primary debate - but voters were too concerned with the small stuff.
YES - I remain cautiously optimistic that we will wake up and join much of the rest of the world. Population control needs to be in the works as well.
6
The sad truth, global warming increases are not linear but accelerating. The climate driven disasters of the last decade will double over the next and so on. The challenge is to get the public to understand the implications of this. For example, why are we spending billions on going to Mars and very little on advancing nuclear power technology. The acceleration rate is such that solar and wind will not be able to keep up with air conditioning our living environment sufficiently to permit human survival.
5
"People are saying"?
But I think you make a good - no, a great point. The most important questions we can put on the ballot are those that deal with our survival: war, terrorism, the economy, nuclear proliferation. The environment is without a doubt the most serious survival-related issue out there. It boils down to this - if you turn the world to garbage, then no matter how much money you have, all there is to buy is garbage.
2
Yes, but today’s headlines about the Democratic Party are : “ Democrats select transgender person in Vermont, Muslim in Connecticut and black in Minnesota “ achievements, welcome as they are, that electrify, oh say, 1% of voters.
Unless Democrats become known for something other than social/cultural issues that concern perhaps 5% of voters they and we will all lose again.
2
Nice idea, but I think it is too idealistic!
Trump can change his tune, and embrace climate change any day.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No, I think Democrats must change their tune to embrace ordinary people, with more simplistic messaging. Trump is a master of the Tweet and sound bite. Obama was no drama. Trump has drama.
My fear is that Democrats remain too idealist and aloof, now.
I am afraid Democrats will lose the House vote, for this reason.
I suggest they hold idea contests to find better ideas, right now!
================================================
Not to design something is to suffer design by default. Between humankind's greed and parasitic stupidity - I'm not holding out much hope. This is an existential problem of our very survival.
Aside from those who are too blind/stupid to see many of us are caught in the idiotic snare of 'saving' the planet (which implies we have more control than we actually do) or a misplaced belief that technology will solve our problems in time. It won't.
If it were possible to apologize to the non human creatures with whom we share the planet I would be do so daily. I do anyway in my own private grief over what we are destroying.
I hope we all feel oil is worth it.
1
I think you need to run for election! Be a key advisor for the democratic party and write the narrative!
2
May it be a sign of the times that Thomas Friedman, ever swimming in the mainstream , sees the possibility of environmental issues joining him there. We can only hope that the timid Democratic establishment hears this call from one of their own.
1
Republicans and Trump supporters will soon get on board with saving the planet. But they will talk geoengineering rather than conservation. Mountaintop removal is nothing compared to manufacturing clouds to cool the planet.
Democrats have a chance to get out in front by advocating responsible forms of geoengineering that pull carbon from the atmosphere. The technology isn't there yet. But there are reasons to think it could be.
1
Don't hold your breath! From EcoWatch: "Democrats Will Take Fossil Fuel Money After All" (8/13/2018): https://www.ecowatch.com/
1
@Robert
Exactly. One can only hope that Tom Perez and the rest of the DNC leadership read Mr. Friedman's column, with particular attention to the number of clean energy workers.
A significant problem HRC had in the 2016 election was that, whether fairly or not, she came across as being excessively concerned with schmoozing and sniffing out money. One has to wonder whether the DNC has learned a blessed thing.
1
New Dem slogan, "How hot do YOU want it to get? VOTE DEMOCRAT!"
1
Although Mr. Friedman gives a mention to the high-protein American diet, his four zeros misses one of the most important sources of greenhouse gas--methane emissions from animal agriculture. Methane has as much as 28 times more warming effect than carbon dioxide (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/29/methane-emissions-ca.... Reducing or even eliminating meat and dairy consumption is just as important as the other four zeros, and would have profound benefits for human health, too.
1
Until the Democrats start getting out in front on issues they'll never be affective. The Republicans excel at getting out in front on issues, leaving the Democrats playing catch-up.
We need moneyed Think Tanks in place to grind away getting the message out and get to abandon playing catch-up all the time.
The main reason this is not a concern to Trump is he can buy his way out of the problem. He lives in a tower, he has local commuities create berms to keep the sea out of his resorts. And he wouldn't know a national park unless he could ride across it in a golf cart. And most of his rich buddies are in the same boat. The one thing they want is money and they feel they have not tapped fossil fuels to gain the maximum return yet, the environment be damned. And like all the rest of his agenda....the tax cuts....the deregulation....the immigration policy....who will pay the price for all this is the average person. It's not Trump's house that burns or basement that floods. It's not Trump's kids who are exposed to Chlorpyrifos, it's the kids exposed to it in the heartland. Who pays for all the damage done? The firefighters putting out the fires? The local disaster relief from floods? The lung disease from exposure? The Federal flood insurance? The smaller national parks being overcrowded and developed? You, average American, will pay for all this. And Trump will go on demanding tax breaks on the buildings he builds and demands the local community pay to save his golf courses. Because in Trump's world he doesn't pay the price, you do. All his followers out think that is a good thing. But nature always wins. And all the tweets, insults, and red hats will not change that one bit. Maybe you ought to restart smoking. There's profit in that too.
2
The Washington state November Ballot Initiative I-1631 put Mother Nature up for election in 2018. It is a fee on industrial polluters that generates about $1 billion annually to fund clean energy and over 40,000 clean energy jobs by 2035. It promotes cleaner air, cleaner water and healthier forests. It promotes healthier environments in low-income and Native American communities. It cuts WA carbon emissions by 40% by 2035. All for an estimated 14 cents per gallon of gas, i.e. < $3 per week driving 500 miles per week at 25 mpg. It provides a model for other states and is a stimulus to clean energy and energy efficiency industries. Of course Big Oil is fighting it with millions to oppose it.
2
@ Emory: We could use colder in the winter up here. Keeps the disease vector insects at bay and N. New England is one of the last redoubts against Big-Box uniformity that mars the rest of the country. People can't handle the winter, much the same way they can't handle the truth.
The argument is intriguing, but the answer has to be "perhaps." There is a long history of candidates running on nature, and an equally long history of the environment being trumped (sorry) by economic issues. In this case, however, climate is imperiling the economy, so it's a matter of making the case as clearly and simply as possible, and then pushing back forcefully against deniers and know-nothings.
3
Almost no one reading this column will disagree with its contents. The problem is that those who need to read it don't. To be able to move the needle on climate change Tom should try to get invited by Fox News and other such worthy outlets and make his case without losing his cool when confronted by people who blather utter nonsense loudly with great conviction to cover their ignorance.
4
I hope the Editorial Board reads this column. As a Times subscriber for over 25 years, I've concluded that the paper has no love for solar power, which is almost always shown in a very negative light.
And the axe always seems to be out for Elon Musk, who, despite his obvious problems, is trying to move heaven and earth to bring us solar power with reliable battery storage and desirable electric cars. His solar roof tiles that mimic traditional roofing is also a breakthrough that has received virtually no Times mention, except in an article calling the company "Dangerous."
I understand the journalistic brief to shy away from the appearance of hype, but It would be helpful if readers knew more about the progress taking place by many engineers and manufacturers in the solar industry, especially. It's hard for people to get excited about adopting these technological advances if they don't even know what's out there.
2
"Climate change makes the hots hotter, the wets wetter and the dries drier. " It may be useful to also point out that, should the Greenland melt rate stay consistently higher, climate change will make the Northeast US and the British Isles colder in the winter. The use of cold winters to scoff at global warming facts is a powerful anti-environmental tool and proactive messages about their cause should be used. Pump the pump.
1
As with the rise of Trump, this is all about the GOP. The truth here is not about some subtle scientific principle, and the population that ignores climate change data is the same that believes Trump is an honest politician on the side of working Americans. The GOP has cast their future with the philosophy of Trump; say anything and win no matter the cost.
The GOP must pay for their lies. Save the planet for our children, and vote in November.
5
I wish I could be optimistic that Americans, especially Californians, would wake up and demand leadership on the issue of climate change. Yet, I think that once the fire season passes, and before the next mudslide season begins, it will all be forgotten - even by those who 'will rebuild' their overpriced mansions in the forests and foothills. There are simply too many people on this planet, and 'mother nature' is going to correct that situation, even as the vast majority of humans continue to pretend we don't need to change our overconsumption patterns, don't need preserve the rain forests, don't need to swiftly develop, can forgo birth control, and can put off developing wind and solar resources. I wish it were just blind and lame leadership, but it seems to be human nature that is the problem. We were built to proliferate, like all the other creatures.
4
Only one big problem with this scenario. The democrats are obsessed with mass immigration. Mr friedman hinted at the problem when he mentioned that we are headed for over 8.5 billion. He didn't mention that the u.s. has over 325 million now, third most populous country on earth and the highest per capita co2 producers on the planet. These two facts are incompatible with protecting the environment. You simply cannot claim to care about GW, the environment and green house emissions and be for increasing the u.s. population through any means, immigration or births. Turning low co2 producing immigrants into high co2 producing Americans is what immigration does to the environment. A policy of lowering the u.s. and the global population would be a corner stone of a sound, sustainable environmental policy for the future, but the democrats are about as far as they can be from that now.
1
Any argument as to the global impact of climate change is wasted in the US. The myopia of the American voter is such that, if it isn't on the local news, it might as well not have happened. Heat wave in England - not my problem. Draught in Australia - not my problem.
If the effects of climate change are not part of the local news in red states, it will have no impact on Trump's reelection probabilities.
A good hurricane running from Florida through North Carolina in September of 2020 or a massive tornado, of Wizard of Oz proportions, touching down in Kansas late in the summer of 2020 could move the electorate - but it would be a risky strategy.
Nonetheless, the Democrats should have this in their back pockets and pull it out, if it becomes real.
I'm not wishing the ill effects of climate change on anybody, anywhere, but here in the US, only personal tragedy seems to have any effect.
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@MS Even then if it costs money, the republicans are against it. Their donors demand they resist, and they do it with gusto.
1
@MS When food and water shortages hit enough people or we have a serious epidemic like Spanish flu, perhaps people will pay attention.
1
Mr. Friedman is exactly right in my opinion. There is a lot of money to be made in alternative energy, which will give the Dems a great economic message for middle America. The Dems also need to pinpoint disasters in Red States and connect them to climate change. We just had a flood in Independence, Kansas. There are fires all over the Red West, not just Blue California. Dems need to be aggressive and attack this issue.
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@Anthony
You've never had floods before in Independence, KS?
A quick Bing search, and I found a hundred + images of the long and storied history of flooding in your small burg.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=flooding%20history%20Independence%2...
Fact is...when you live in a small town next to a river..and just north of your town you have two rivers that converge into one before doing some weird twists and turns that promote easy flooding...it's probably time to look for higher ground vs. trying to get the people in India to walk to work instead of drive.
Move to higher ground..and make sure everyone in your lovely little community is paying full price for flood insurance. No subsidies. It only promotes people rebuilding in the same place instead of relocating to a nicer place...like Topeka.
@Anthony
The problem is that many who live in this state believe that the floods are “Gods Will”. How do you argue with people who celebrate the end of the world?
2
As our region of the southern Appalachians experiences rainforest levels of rain - over one year's worth in just over seven months, causing destructive mudslides - and as I read reports of much of the planet suffering under record heat, drought and fire, I am reading British physicist Geoffrey West's excellent "Scale". West discusses global population and temperature in terms of exponential growth. Suffice it to say, we're in a heap of trouble. And, news flash to them, that includes Republicans.
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Mother nature has been on the ballot ever since the days of smog and the Ozone. The problem is Republicans have had a better message of nonchalance. Everyone knows the planet is getting warmer but Republicans insist it isn't manmade. And the religious right still firmly believe God will decide the end of time. Religion is so prevalent in everyday America I see athletes look to the heavens anytime they get a base hit or knock down a trey. How does one counter that with, "the solutions to our problems depend on us and not on God?"
3
with solar panels on my roof my last 2 electric bills have been ZERO. I would opt for a nation wide program financed by bonds or other instruments as part of a national infrastructure program to put solar on every building in the country.
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@jonathan berger
You are certainly right. I have dreamed of owning solar panels and an electric car for 20+ years. But both cost too much money so are far beyond my reach. This is also true for many millions of US citizens.
It will take a very strong leader to start us in this new direction. I am sure that the ideas of Bernie Sanders and other democratic socialists could begin this type of fix at the same time that they attempt to make wealth and jobs more equatable for everyone.
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@jonathan berger You could reach out to Bernie Sanders to help out, but I'm not sure which of his 3 homes he's at today.
Therein lies the problem, doesn't it?
Preach a minimalist message..and live a maximum lifestyle.
I feel for you..I really do. You want to have a true believer leading your party..but she's only 28 and living in the Bronx.
@jonathan berger
Not to brag, but after I bought a Mercedes, my rental car bill went to zero.
Most of us would like to have solar panels, but that’s exactly what the power companies don’t want.
Current legislative efforts are making it more difficult and expensive, not less. Mercedes or nothing. Lucky you.
So we come to the difficult part of being a person concerned about the effects of climate change. You want the world to understand the danger and you want not to find yourself wishing that natural disasters will occur of sufficient gravity to change the minds of the people who are taking money to oppose the reality of the science they otherwise respect.
That's the issue, right? The intelligent people who understand that they have a genuinely neutral attitude to science find themselves having to necessarily conclude that other intelligent people who do not accept the science of climate change are doing so because they are being paid - or believe their income depends on their being willing - to deny what they know to be true.
This generates a genuine and deep bitterness. To see clearly that other people are deliberately endangering millions of innocent people and potentially your own children or grandchildren is a sickening feeling. The bald-faced insistence of climate change deniers that they are doing what they do for some genuine reason just makes the deceit that much worse. Nothing would be too bad for these people.
But you can't drift into fantasies of epic disaster - the Gulf Stream diverting, plunging the UK into a new Ice Age, millions killed, tens of millions displaced, the world economy a shambles... Nah. You can't want that. The point is you've read the science and you are predicting exactly that - unless things change radically.
It's not easy being Green.
3
Poll independents. Will climate change pull to the D column?
I’d begin the Dem’s argument with the opening line:
“Trump is willing to gamble with your children’s future – even with their lives – that climate change is a hoax. Are you?”
7
It is stupid and cruel for us as a nation to wait until 2020 to get serious about Mother Nature. Congress needs to be focused on what is happening in our country as well as the planet now. Every year we fail to improve air and water quality; every year we fail to encourage home owners to implement solar power; every year we fail to improve vehicle mileage; every year that we fail to advance new jobs in the renewable energy industry; every year we fail to explore ways to protect our natural surroundings (animals & plants) we waste time to protect the survival of our world.
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@Rev Wayne After I mow my yard twice today with my old lawnmower, take my 1990 Ford pickup truck to Home Depot to buy firewood for my outdoor fire pit, I'm going to stop at the store and pick up a gallon of milk and a few dozen racks of ribs to cook on my huge Weber barbecue grill fueled by Char-broil briquettes and damp mesquite wood.
I can't do that until I clear cut the trees in the backyard since the shade their providing is allowing bees to propagate near my wife's flowers. I have my DeltaDust ready to spray on those little suckers so nobody gets stung.
And darned if I didn't forget that I left the hose on last night in the backyard. At least I remembered to turn the sprinkler system from running 20 minutes per zone once a day to run 40 minutes per zone every other day.
I'm glad to help. This year? Average rain. Average Temps..average humidity and dew points. Of course..that's got as much to do with climate change as wildfires in California.
@Rev Wayne
" Congress needs to be focused on what is happening in our country as well as the planet now."
Yeah--well, good luck with that. Republican fantasists and handmaidens to dirty industries will see that nothing interferes with carbon polluting old technology and producers. Have you heard of Mitch McConnell--he'll be famous someday as the guy who doomed the U.S. and the world, back-stopping and encouraging Agent Orange, the president who would not wake up and smell the coffee.
@Rev Wayne
Here in California, the state is burning. According to Trump, it's the fault of the Environmental groups. His supporters regurgitate that excuse. This president is the most dangerous person on the planet today and we will all end up paying for it.
The rich and powerful have an escape route. They want to speed things up so they can have it all. Once the air is clear, they will come out of their holes and enjoy everything without competition. They can then recount how the minions just gave it away over stupid wedge issues, propaganda and racism. There's something in the water? Causes brain damage.
Thank you Thomas! I have been asking myself why, with all these GLOBAL weather (massive) abnormalities, the media - and Main Street - would start talking about Climate Change. But they don't. The media, and Main Street, have been talking about all these (massive)weather abnormalities like a sports game. Daily temperature, acreage on fire, days with no rain (oh and by the way, major new melting in the Antarctic) - but no connectivity to the Big Issue, potentially the end of the earth in a few decades. I also don't understand why young people aren't "getting out there" and protesting. This, as you say, is not a Blue/Red issue. Despite all the climate deniers (highly correlated to Trump voters), tis is a global people issue.
Again, thanks Thomas for bringing it up. May you light the fire (pardon the pun!), may you issue the Global Warning to start an American media, social and political awakening on Global Warming.
2
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
1
How about the worst red tide in years that is hurting Florida?
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Mr. Friedman you sound like an Austrian living in Salzburg! This is the United States of America in which after 20 months of the most disastrous Presidency by a man who is the most unqualified person to be not just the President of the United States but the President of the most backward country on this planet, and yet 42% of Americans want him to continue as their President! These are the same people who elected Senator Inhof who took a snowball to the Senate Floor during a hearing on Climate Change to prove that there is no Global Warming because he is holding a snowball in his hands!! Democracy in an ignorant Nation is self destructive.
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It no longer matters who or what is on any ballot, it's all over.
The science has been in for quite some time: climate change is already rolling along quite nicely, and it is caused by humans. I keep track of events, and always support the right folks (ie solar, wind, eliminate fossil fuel, etc) even in spite of it being an exercise in futility. Unfortunately, at this point this only delays the onset of a multi-pronged set of looming disasters by a decade or two. The disasters are already baked in.
At 7.6 billion, increasing 80 million plus annually, the population explosion drives everything. The Keeling curve shot past 400 ppm CO2 a few years ago, with a big yawn. We elect a moron president who pulls the US out of the Paris accords. He places corrupt scientifically illiterate jerks into the EPA, etc. We don't have time for this, now or 3 decades ago. We have shot past a number of tipping points. I'm no longer going to enumerate things that are blatantly obvious anymore. It is an exercise in futility. It's over folks. There is no explaining the obvious to the oblivious.
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Amen, Tom!
1
Thomas, you've got your eyes on the prize, i.e. what's really at stake in the corrupt cronyism and give-aways to Big Energy corporations, that are the hallmarks of this administration--survival of the species. Yes, the Russia stuff matters and every other venal act of Trump and his cohorts. But as both you and Noam Chomsky have said, dooming the human race just so a billionaire can stuff a few more dollars in his pocket, is nothing short of evil.
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If Mother Nature were on the ballot she would deluge cities, breath fire and thunder- parch the earth. Melt the glaciers, breath typhoons and hurricanes and in all ways express her displeasure...
But then again...that is exactly what she is doing now.
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I love Tom, but this is where the Democrats/liberals get into trouble: thinking too much. Do I think that there is an environmental issue? Sure. But just because you have a hammer does not mean that every issue is a nail.
There are a couple of problems with choosing environmental issues. One, it is a conceptual issue, something that climate deniers have (unsuccessfully) rebutted for years. To those who choose not to believe; they are never going to do so.
But for the vast majority of us who do, the case is closed. And the evidence here is clear: over $250 billion of new green investment every year says that this ship has sailed. Quit spending scarce political capital on fighting the last war. Trump is just appealing to his base, and to the likes of the Kochs.
Two, the opportunity costs here are that we need to hammer home issues that resonate with those (increasingly few) who are persuadable: pocketbook issues like healthcare. And possibly Trump's wacky tariffs. How's that working out, huh?
The 2020 election will be won and lost in the battleground states. That election will not be won on the environment, sad to say. For them, that is a tomorrow issue. To win, we need to focus on issues where they are managing for today, and solve those problems.
Trump's predictable response will be that the economy is in great shape. Don't assume that. Many people out there cannot afford a $400 car repair. Carville was right in '92: It's (still) the economy, stupid.
1
If only the Democrats had the guts to do this.
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Mr. Friedman: Mother Nature was one of my earliest memories in the Thornton W. Burgess stories, which, of course included Buster Bear, Little Joe Otter and Farmer McGregor. They knew, as we often don’t, that Mother Nature extracts a very high cost for messing with her. Great lessons for youngsters, embedded in stories that capture young minds!
That is what the larger story is about, isn’t it, the future, which is our children and grandchildren. Trump would tweet:
“Sad, so sad!”
As indeed it is whenever those empowered with the future are so ideologically obsessed with their heads buried in the sand! Like a parent leaving an infant in a car with the windows shut!
1
Population growth, in addition to the neglect of our climate, is about to give us a very 'hard rain' so to speak. "It's a hard rain that's gonna fall" (Dylan) on all of us.
While there is much blame to go around, I believe that much of the blame falls on the US's faux Christians. Fighting tooth and nail against contraception, planned, informed parenthood, and abortion have been their signature cause for decades. The GOP has pandered to them by extending their cause out into the world, including Africa. Tying aid to these religious constraints has hurt populations and climates throughout the world.
The old GOP is no longer but Trump's party is perpetuating the nonsense that has brought us to this point. It will be up to the blue wave to stop it.
3
The inconvenient truth is that fossil fuel production and consumption are critical to the US economy in ways comparable to Russia and Saudi Arabi and Venezuela. Cutting either production ir consumption would involve great sacrifice
Anericsns do not make sacrifices They live high in the hog and see that as normal. They live way beyond their means—whether consuming more government than they are willing to fund, or spending the money they need to save for retirement, or driving gas guzzlers when you could get there at far lower gasoline spending, or tolerating a health system that is ridiculously expensive. And there is zero sign that is changing. Sure if someone else will pay for it they would go along as long as it involved zero inconvenience
Only when the system finally collapses do americans ever act. Been true for a century. Right now they just turn up the AC.
2
Don't forget about massive sargassum blooms, red tide, green algae destroying lakes and a myriad of other examples that slap us in the face each day. Millions of Americans have refused to accept the overwhelming evidence of climate change for decades. Recent, more dramatic disasters, will not change their views. They remain incapable of or unwilling to perform "simple math." They view the issue in the same manner as religion. No facts can change their fundamental "belief" that climate change is a hoax. They are far more concerned with racial and religious issues than the future of the planet. Friends who work in the field tell me that the prevailing focus is no longer proving the existence of climate change but trying to devise ways to penetrate the closed minds of the public.
Trump does not refuse to accept climate change. He simply does not care. I doubt he loses a minute of sleep (or twitter time) fretting about whether he will be remembered by historians as the President who allowed the world to pass the tipping point. He cares only about the moment and, unlike any other President I have ever studied, remains utterly unconcerned about his historical footprint.
2
The environmental disasters pictured in the movies are here. They are already occurring. We must act now to keep the planet inhabitable. I am afraid that it may be too late.
1
I totally agree with Mr. Rosenblit, who often hits the bull's eye, and of course Mr. Freedman; but what concerns me is whether or not we have crossed the point of no return and that we have begun a process that will continue, no matter what we do.
I bought my first car (used) about 60 years ago it was a V8 and got 12 mpg and 16 mpg on the road, no seat belts or anti pollution devices. When I sold my last car and gave up driving lasy year, that car, a Toyota, got 34 mpg and 40 mpg on the highway and passed the yearly anti pollution test.
NOW Trump wants to remove or roll back those advances because dirty cars are cheaper to run and make than those imposed by the Obama administration. So one of the things that have gone into the mix is white spite and the necessity to obliterate Obama's achievements.
I don't know if it is too late or not. If you jump out of a 60 story window or are pushed and as to you pass the 40th floor,on the way down, it is too late to change your mind. I am an American and I am unwilling to give up with out a fight. Yet we are on the edge of that window and an ignorant, destructive mad man is trying to make us all jump and if we go well will have reached the point of no return.
We need to give this mental case a hair cut, and a close one on election day. He and this corrupt regime has put climate change on the ballot.
2
Today’s human population is north of Seven Billion. If you were to take all the humans that had lived in the past 10,000 years and added that to our Seven Billion plus... the number wouldn’t amount to too much over Eight Billion. The angle of the population growth curve is continually trurning upwards, increasing as it increases. The cost to Earth of so many inhabitants who require more and more food, space, and energy is unmanagable. These are facts. They don’t matter. Emotions only matter. When Love is in the air, babies are born. This is an insoluble problem. It’s not going to win 2018, nor will it win 2020.
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@Matt Cook. Neither the democrats or the republicans will dare mention population. Friedman didn't except in passing. Until that issue is addressed explicitly there will be no solution to any of the environmental (or most other problems we face). There is no technological, lifestyle or other way out of our current mess unless the number of humans is included. The democrats want near open borders, to increase their only source of new voters, yet claim to care about the environment. You can't have it both ways.
1
@Matt Cook
You are no doubt correct. You speak of the exponential growth of the human population. If one looks at the math of exponential growth, it is very scary and the doubling times of the numbers increases dramatically and horrid events can then happen very quickly. In this case of human growth it will cause massive problems. The famous scientist Edward Teller stated that "The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to emotionally comprehend the exponential function." And Carl Sagan put it another way: "Exponentials can't go on forever because they will gobble up everything." And finally: "exponential growth never can go on very long in a finite space with finite resources," Meadows and Randers in The Limits to Growth.
So you are no doubt correct; We are doomed.
@Matt Cook Population growth rates in much of the world have slowed below replacement rate. But people are living longer. The roughly 9 billion expected by 2050 will strain planetary resources and human ingenuity particularly with climate change and other threats.
On the horizon are technologies for major reductions in the cost of launching spacecraft to outer space and the potential to use asteroid and lunar resources to construct cities in outer space. Possibly, Trump has fallen into a unique point in human history where space settlement becomes economically feasible. However, Trump's major flaws are likely to prevent him from being the leader who makes this possible, because the key is international cooperation. The vision of America dominating outer space, that is central to the Space Force called for by Trump is very different from Neil Armstrong's words when stepping on the surface of the Moon nearly 50 years ago: "A small step for a man...A giant leap for Mankind." Donald Trump is negating the very strengths that made the U.S. leader of the world, the country whose leadership got every country in the world in agreement to combat climate change.
Why wait? This should be central in campaigns now.
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Except I burst out laughing. What a mood bust, it was a very enjoyable read up to the hilarious part about "Democratic Message"
No message in 2016 and 2 years later, nothing worth repeating:
"Better Deal" (for whom? The Leader of the House?)
"For the People" (What does that mean?)
Why no Message? What can't the Dems say what's up or to where they're leading us?
Does corporate money tie their tongues? Dull their pens?
1
@Bulldozer. The democratic message has been loud and clear: more immigration and more amnesty. The problem is voters don't want that and neither does the environment.
These are all good policy recommendations. However, they will not be implemented as long as we embrace neoliberal policies. Some form of Democratic Socialism is imperative to address these issues. The resistance to this is from the uber capitalists.
1
I used to think Friedman has some sense. But he sounds as loony as most of the other Time's writers. Yes, this has been a year of extremes. So many living out west now, such poor fire mgmt, that there have been more fires started. They do more damage because of more people and because CA doesn't rid itself of dead underbrush that fans these fires.
And yes, this (May - Jul) just edged out the 1930's for the warmest year for that time frame in the US. Whoop dee do. And remember the massive tornadoes this spring? And the hurricanes that devastated the coast? Oops. That hasn't happened. Might show the danger of using weather extremes to argue a warming planet. Some years you get them, some years you don't.
Hey, but nothing wrong with a nifty new power grid -- particularly if you use nukes. But Tom needs to remember that the US is 5% of the whole darn planet -- population and land mass. And that we've been declining in per capita and total emissions since 2007 and are at the same level as 1990. Meanwhile the emerging world (which only agreed to think about limiting emissions in the PA) accounts for virtually all new emissions since 1990 when there was about 20 million KT's emitted globally. Now there are about 36 million kts. Some back of the envelope work arrives at around an additional 200 million KT's into the atmosphere since 1990, and not from the US. Voters aren't going to vote on an issue (unless they're easily mislead) where the US has little control.
3
@Ralphie. U.S. Population 5% of the worlds population using 25% of its resources. Since 1980 our co2 emissions have dropped 25% per capita. The bad news. Since 1980 our population has increased...wait for it...25%. No net change over all. If we don't have a national population policy we might as well party on, nothing will improve without it.
3
Tom, I wish 90 days in the age of acceleration would be long enough to educate the voters on your point. Unfortunately the fires are in California and much of what you are talking about is outside the boarders of the United States, and today that’s a loser. I live in West Virginia, and my biggest challenge is to convince left leaning democrats that have been, “Never Manchin Voters” and independents to vote, and vote for him. Understand what the oppositions represents. That’s my challenge in 90 days, and if you have any advise on this let me know.
Attention. Attention, everyone. I'd like to see a show of hands, who thinks that a static climate is a good thing? OK. A couple of you.
Now, who thinks there is a natural modulation to the Earth's climate? OK, quite a few of you.
How many think Man is creating huge swings in the climate? Almost all of you.
How many think, by the hand of Man, we can curtail our activity, such that, we can dampen the "abnormal" modulation and make it favorable to human kind? About the same number.
What the if the "normal" climate, one that is beneficial to human kind, produces unfavorable conditions for other biomes? Let me ask it a different way.
What if the climate we desire is, too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry for other life forms? What should we do about that?
What if our climate is like the story "Goldilocks and The Three Bears", but there are only 2 bowls of porridge? What if there is no, "just right"?
1
We are the worst thing ever to happen to this beautiful planet. If Mother Nature was President, I would expect her to ask Father Sky if there is a return policy on humans.
1
Why has #45 not been out to California, to give support to the thousands of Americans who have lost their homes and their futures, to the hundreds of firefighters who have fought so courageously against these mammoth fires? Not to mention the loss of lives among both groups. Where is the consoling chief executive figure among all this environmental devastation? Oh, right!-- he's on a "working vacation" at his golf course in NJ. So much for a man of the people! Truth is, our "Grifter-in-Chief" can't really be bothered with the common people and their facing a major environmental catastrophe. Dereliction of duty is his first name.
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Excellent opinion piece... The point is, the planet, as a sphere orbiting the sun, will survive all we can throw at her; ironically, we, as passengers, can not. We, as a species, have an incredibly
narrow comfort zone in which we can survive, much less thrive. These zones will get pinched, will move around, will be squeezed out.... where will everyone go? What of a very quick collapse of crops, animal husbandry, the seas? What of military responses
as populations ( tribes anyone?) are thrown into chaos?
Oh, sorry, I'm forgetting that Trump and the GOP lackey system assures us not to worry.... Trump is the only one who can solve this. Really!? He and they are contributing, what actions they take make things worse; their alternatives, denying, looking the other way, make things worse.
I often think of one simple line from a Neil Young song, from a long time ago: "Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970's".
Well, Mother Nature is not to be trifled with, she's punching back and we'll find that once we're really hit, and hurt, our fight plan will be out the window.
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Remember "it's not nice to fool Mother Nature"? Nature bats last and wins every time against the puny humans.
El Presidente Loco can attempt to repeal the hydrologic cycle, but the Salmonista party will prevail.
Right.
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Bravo Thomas, I second the motion!
Why on earth is that firefighter in the photo wasting precious water by hosing down that flag? That was hardly a time to be trying to protect symbols instead of homes.
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Population growth needs to stop.
Rain forests need to be preserved.
Those are urgent too.
3
In other words, to elect the typical corporate Democrat, a Clinton/Obama type, somebody this columnist would support, it will take a disaster.
What a recommendation for the program, even forgetting that a Democrat elected on that basis will be powerless to change American energy policy, even if she wanted to.
At the rate the ice bergs are melting it's just a matter of time before the beautiful Polar Bears are extinct and we will be under water. It amazes me that the person in our White House can't understand the simple basics of Global Warming. We see what it is doing every day. It also amazes me how little he cares for his family and the rest of the population. He only lives from day to day and as Scarlett O'Hara said, 'I'll worry about it tomorrow". Trouble is he won't worry about it tomorrow or any other day.
2
Global problems such as climate change and the nuclear ambitions of Iran cannot be addressed unilaterally by U.S. despite its demonstrated capacity to bankrupt the economies of states that oppose president Trump. The Paris Climate Accord as well as the Iran Nuclear Accord created instruments to better address global problems.
Trump is fundamentally at odds with multilateral problem solving. As climate change increasingly takes hold the absence of the U.S. from the table will weaken global response unless the EU with other like-minded powers take joint action.
Fear-mongering and intensive propaganda by the administration can work despite an even worse hurricane season and summer storms. The U.S. is huge and not all states have been equally affected even by the worst disasters.
A safe assumption is that the Trump Party will take no effective action on the climate front. But, Mother Nature is very fickle even as climate change accelerates a year of good weather could 2020. The response needs to be more fundamental to offer credible solutions and to address the deep flaws of the Trump administration and not rely on Mother Nature to win the election.
1
THANK YOU FOR THIS!!
2
The catastrophe vote? Anxiety brings out Trump's base. The answer will be:"jobs jobs jobs", or haven't you been paying attention?Its not the issues, its the delivery system that covers 90% of the airwaves, including bots and twitter accounts, and op ed writers with poor insight, like Friedman, who thinks there are moderate Republicans (when 80%+ consistently think Trump is doing a heck of a job), a Saudi prince that rounds up dissent and calls it ethical a great guy, and summarizes complex issues with the brilliance of someone who only looks in the mirror, sure of his own sagacity. This op ed writer has no nuance, understands only the superficial.
1
If only the Dems would run on economic inequality, rather than women's issues and abolishing ICE, we might have a chance. Since Nancy Pelosi shut down the govt last year in an attempt to bring more illegal immigrants into the country, Republicans have driven home the message that Democrats stand for "abortion and amnesty." Just as they did in 2016, Dems appear poised to reject Democratic socialism ("not centrist enough"--according to those who worship the center, wherever it may be) and embrace Identity Politics once again, attacking the wickedness of old straight white males. Doing so, the Dem establishment (Pelosi, Schumer, et al.) will again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
1
@Unconventional Liberal What is "economic inequality"?
Economics, by it's very nature is never static. Income inequality is even more ridiculous.
The market dictates how much people are paid. Whether you like it or not. And there is no way go against that, in either direction. If the pay is too low, the job will not be filled, except by illegals. If the pay is too high, the business will lose money, then, correct or fail.
The GOP/trump House & Senate 1% already live behind walled castles and "own" international resources. As our communities become less and less inhabitable and destroyed, they have their luxury bunkers ready and waiting.
Two questions:
How many GOP/trump supporters think they will be invited into trump's & the 1% 's luxury bunkers?
When will the will U.S citizens vote to protect their children?
Let us know in November.
2
Tom, what you’re writing about makes my argument of that song “Proud to be an American, to rather be Proud to be a Democrat “, but unfortunately, the Trump base still listens only its pseudoscience leader.
What the democrats need to do right now is to find an approach to reach roughly 20% of Americans who are still sitting on the fence. These are the citizens that can rid us of the cancer of Trump. So–How do we reach them?
First, let’s STOP using the “lessor of 2 evils approach”. Surely, with over 370 million people in the US, we can find and support a real leader with “The Right Stuff.” Some suggestions? I’ll start with someone like Tom Freedmen. Actually, I’m not joking. Again, roughly 40% of Americans wouldn’t vote for Tom if their lives depended on it, but we only need 41% of the electorate to put someone like him over the top. But you say, he isn’t a politician? Duh!!!!
Mother Nature is on the Ballot for EVERY Election. Her name is the “ Democrat “. Choose wisely.
4
This is an issue of great importance for people with common sense but that excludes those who still support Trump. I’ve seen interviews with farmers who are being badly hurt by tariffs but still support Trump because they believe the nation will benefit in the long run. A 1930's style dust bowl would probably not sway them. Changing rational minds is not the same as convincing people that their faith is misplaced.
3
In order to climate change be a concern people have to pay attention to the issue. It's important to pay close attention to contrary views so I recently flipped to Fox News and the weather report was on. It was a day where New Jersey and New York had experienced record flooding, other news stations were showing footage of submerged towns, a bride being lifted from a submerged car. Fox weather report? Completely concentrating on the temperature and repeated the word 'comfortable' multiple times. If that was the only weather report I knew, I would come away thinking this was a great week and wonderful summer. How do you combat perpetually cheery?
1
Tom,
I guess my question for you and the people reading this column is how do we force the issue?
Instead of "what if", how do we make Mother Nature an issue for 2020?
We know that no matter what extreme weather we endure between now and 2020, the deniers will still be there.
The older people can scream at each other (and do) until we're blue in the face..and it will all be chalked up to "political differences". That's not getting us anywhere.
I believe that, even more so than the gun control fight, this battle is in the hands of the youth of America. They will be the ones to suffer the future consequences of an out-of-control environment.
Shaming their parents/teachers/leaders into action is a start.
They must make it unacceptable and truly socially uncomfortable for their elders to keep squandering away the only planet we have to live on.
They need to start asking the "why" questions at home. And pushing back when told "that's the way it is".
A few more years of the "way it is", and they won't have a way forward.
1
I couldn't agree more. Extreme weather should have an extreme impact on the midterms -- and every election. The vast majority of Americans have now been subjected to Hurricanes, Wildfires, Drought, Floods, and/or Extreme Heat. There is a new organization PlanetCool.org dedicated to helping change the political climate on climate change. This issue deserves support.
Only people on the 27th floor in NYC care about this issue Mr. Friedman.
@hawk Maybe true in your circle of acquaintances, but climate is an important topic to anyone who has been impacted by drought, wildfires, floods and/or epic storms that damage our homes and infrastructure. In many parts of the country, we’ve been dealing with all of the above for years. Believe me, it matters to a LOT of people.
1
@hawk Ask anyone in California or anywhere in the American West, and they will tell you that this is THE ultimate issue right now. Half of the planet is catching on fire, including all over Canada and even in Scandinavia and the Arctic Circle, the other half is under water from torrential rains and storms. Hawk's idiotic statement ignores all the farmers all over the world who have been sounding alarms and being ignored by the likes of Hawk.
1
How hot does the sand have to get before the ostriches pull out their heads?
8
My second submission, also linked to Reader Pick no. 1 Rozenblit who notes that we must use solar now in settings where the solar panel is accompanied by the storage battery.
For a fine example of that kind of system in use NOW, turn to this article by Times Business columnist Diane Cardwell, July 29, 2017
"WALTHAM, Vt. — In a new low-income development that replaced a trailer park here, rooftop solar panels sparkle in the sun while backup batteries quietly hum away in utility closets.
About an hour away, in Rutland, homes and businesses along a once-distressed corridor are installing the latest in energy-saving equipment, including special insulation and heat pumps"
Read further in that fine article you encounter this irony: The company bringing about these changes is Green Mountain Power, headed by a woman. GMP is a subsidiary of Gaz Prom, a natural gas company. A second irony is that the Waltham project is for low-income housing, making that project a display of renewable while well off Vermonters continue to use natural-gas while at the same time complaining about the placement of new natural gas pipelines..
As Bruce Rozenblit emphasizes, we can make improvements NOW. You can. Why wait?
Written in a small home on an island in Sweden, 60% heated - and this hot summer even cooled - by a silent air-air heat pump.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
1
Don't know a nice way to say this, but if 45% of Americans can't figure out why Trump isn't fit to be president, how will they understand the intricacies of climate change?
30
@JHM I agree with your point, but hopefully, and this might be a stretch, hopefully! Fire, flood, drought, heat records, increased utility costs, can get their attention. It won’t be due to faux news coverage or extensive research that seems clear. The rest of us have to work harder and vote deniers out of office! Red Oklahoma will not lead the way on that I’m afraid, our politicians are way too deep in the pockets of the oil and gas industry. Earthquakes don’t even shake up the electorate! As for me, I’ll vote Democrat anyway and donate to the cause.
The information and sentiments in this editorial are what every person on the planet should be shouting from the top of their lungs every day at all the political leaders that represent us. Sadly, I do not know of a single person running for office in America this year that has climate change or any environmental issue at the top of their agendas. And that saddens me - no, actually it sickens me - beyond words. Once the birthplace of the environmental movement, America has now become the axis for evil as far as environmental destruction is concerned. Just leaving the Paris Climate Accord makes us that.
Living in the west, we are perhaps more aware of how the climate is radically changing - even year to year there are noticeable changes. But most people literally live with their heads buried in the sand, preoccupied with things that matter not at all. A recent reputable survey I read ranked climate change as dead last as a daily concern of a majority of Americans. Our educational system, political system and our religious leaders have abjectly failed the American people. We are utterly lost as a nation and our priorities are upside down.
Al Gore needs to run for President in 2020. He is a brilliant man, the consummate expert on climate change, an innovator and an excellent administrator with the kind of government experience we need now. He is younger than Trump. He was the one who put the nail in Ross Perot's coffin. He would do the same to Trump. GORE 2020!
6
Population is the real ineffable issue in the whole global malaise.
3
How is Trump's trade war helping the earth? Negative.
Increasing soybean demand from the US to South America means the conversion of more wild lands to industrial agricultural fields. Results: great releases of carbon into the atmosphere, great losses of biodiversity, and great reductions in water into the atmosphere which sustains these great wild reserves and feeds into global water cycles.
Your prescription would be more complete if you add the vast amounts of carbon our high meat diets contribute to climate change. And how all of this is fed by a highly unsustainable industrial agriculture that is diminishing biodiversity and environmental quality in all areas of the world where it dominates land use. Add into this picture the industrial food processing system which contributes to obesity and poor health that are rapidly increasing out of control costs of medical care.
Sick land, sick people, sick air and sick water are not great outcomes for the GOP to run on. Continuing to vilify Al Gore as a defense for their failed stewardship ain't much of a winning hand when the red lights of climate change and the 6th extinction episode are flashing.
Democrats, we have an emergency! Where is the vision for a better way of living on earth that values the rights of future generations as much as it does ours?
1
All I can say is hear, HEAR!! This is the crisis and opportunity for the generation coming of age in this part of the 21st Century. It is so for our entire species. It is a war as significant as WWII was to the last great generation, only this one is a war for self restraint and control of our nature. The most difficult conflict we will ever face.
We must learn to live within this terrarium, not only for ourselves and the future of our progeny, not only for all the other lifeforms with whom we share this planet. No, we must do so because it is our Home, our little piece of God given Paradise in a vast uncaring, uncompromising Universe.
We need to learn to husband it as a gardener would, to keep it secure for those who come after us, because the Earth does not so much belong to us as we rent it from the future. So in light of this Friedman's ideas and comments are steps in the correct direction. Let's go that way and give that future a planet they can enjoy as much as we have to date. It's hard (and best of all, profitable) work ahead folks so let's get to it, shall we?.
John~
American Net'Zen
1
Sure, Democrats have the right idea on climate policy, but as far as 2020 politics goes, short of a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane direct bulls eye hit to Miami in September of 2020, climate policy will not be a salient issue for swing voters. Swing voters don't care how hot it gets in Sweden.
2
It all depends on what the weather in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio is in November 2020. Because the people of those states won't know about the effects of climate change around the world and the potential of green energy - Fox and Friends won't be covering it.
3
Tom’s own book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded,” tells of the 600,000-year pattern of carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures rising and falling predictably in 11,000-year cycles...until the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the onset of massive use of coal and consequential rise in CO2. The science is clear, the facts, are obvious. WHY is there any further debate on this topic ?
5
Everyone! Read this paragraph by Reader Pick no. 1 Bruce Rozenblit and go no further.
"The editiorial is not hyperbole. It is not sensationalism. It is not opinion. It is reality. These are things we can do NOW."
Reflect on that NOW and look around, what has your political unit done in the NOW time frame?
Then read the rest of his and even my comment.
Danish high-tech solid waste incinerators heat Danish and Swedish cities NOW - no fossil fuel at work. One such produces electricity for 48,000 homes in West Palm Beach FL - NOW. The governor of NY, Andrew Cuomo vetoed such renewable energy technology NOW.
Buses in my city, Linköping, run on biogas produced from food and human waste, that in America simply become methane. Solar panels are spreading like wildfire across Swedish rooftops, especially apartment buildings, NOW. The newest example produces electricity equal to the total yearly consumption for that building with summer excess going to the net and winter consumption need added from the net.
Extreme high temperature and drought in SE led to reduced hydro NOW leading to temporary (?) import of coal-produced electricity from Germany NOW.
Don't wait. Install heat-pumps, especially ground-source geothermal. Follow West Palm Beach example NOW/ASAP.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
5
@Larry Lundgren
I always try to find your comments, rational people are hard to find now just as it has always been. I admire all attempts at sustainable living, personally I have always tried to live that way since I was responsible for my own decisions. My comment posted 6 above yours
We had a chance to do something the might have closed the barn door in time, but that was in 1970. You guys have waited to long to make any real difference in our future now. I saw this coming in 1970 when I was driving to work on a cold winter morning in Miami FL. You could see where the multi lane highways were by the purple plume from the car exhausts above them. If pollution like that was visible in a peninsula state with ocean breezes what was happening everywhere else. The first airplane trip I was on from Miami to Memphis I was amazed at the brown smog over the valley cities of Georgia and Tennessee, how could people live there? Now that same brown smog is over most of the country. Sorry folks, you have opened your eyes to late. Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere takes hundreds of years to dissipate, The damage you have done over the last half century is not going away, the only thing that is going to save you now is a time machine that will let you change your past behavior, changing your behavior now will only add a few more years before you reap what you have sown, global mass human migrations and social collapse on a scale never before seen in human history.
Democrats already running on that platform, your calling to weaponize global warming into political action. They just march out global scientist that prove global warming is a hoax.The first snow storm the Democrats will go up in smoke. Trump's power is with his base (they're not like you and I) and with the Russians, and he just needs to peel a few from the center to win. (You know the center who believes both side are to blame). Sanity can return to America, when congress, accepts their rightful role in the constitution. Vote in November, its the only way to get back on track! (I know you and I will vote, but we got to reach out and prove their vote can count, they don't believe that now, or it's already decided by some conspiracy).
Mother Nature is already on the ballot, witness the fires, tornadoes and floods in places where there were none before. Trump's base may not care about climate change but they will if they lose their homes. California Republicans and Iowa farmers are certainly affected. And Trump himself may change his tune if the costs of watering his golf course in scorched Scotland keep rising along with the oceans around Mar-a-Lago.
1
Recently recorded ocean temperature of 79 degrees in San Diego and 76 degrees in eastern Long Island should get some attention... but, I doubt it!
5
Mother Nature doesn't need our votes. She also doesn't need us. We need her. But no matter how hot, wet, cold, windy or fiery it gets between now and November 2018 or 2020, most Americans are not ready yet to vote for their own survival. They will just crank up the AC, file their insurance claims, rebuild on higher ground and oppose any taxes and regulations that cost them another dollar or restrict their god-given right to burn all the fossil fuel they can afford. Those of us who are willing to make small sacrifices now will suffer the same consequences as those who resist. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.
266
@abigail49
A small point but mostly people are not rebuilding on higher ground. Instead they rebuild right where there house stood and then wait for the next flood/storm/surge/hurricane to arrive. And clever Congress uses our tax dollars to pay for that rebuilding.
3
@Old Mainer You are right, of course. But a Republican would never "regulate" away the "right" of people to live where they want to live and their "entitlement" to the taxes of others who make wise and responsible choices.
The only reasonable solution for preservation of our planet would have been capillary demographic control.
Many countries tried it especially China , but unsuccessfully .
China now wants to remove the “ one child per family clause “ due to population unbalance , too many elderly , too many men.
We are doomed .
This administration cutting aid to family planning in many Central and South American countries and removing environmental regulations is accelerating this demise.
4
One approach would be to say that climate change is a judgment. The religious right understands judgments.
1
Unfortunately, our good national Democratic Party has, just this week, reversed their position and determined by a huge majority that it is just fine to take money from Oil & Coal manufacturers and PACS so there's not much chance for them to run on environmental issues this year or in 2020. Too bad about the earth, and those grandchildren. Mr. Friedman, you & the Times had a perfectly viable candidate for President in 2016 if you had really been concerned and couldn't do enough to ridicule him. Don't expect the Democrats to be your saviors next time around! They'll be lovin' up the Kochs et al.
1
Sorry to disillusion you folks, but the cows have left the barn and scattered to the hinterlands. We had a chance to do something the might have closed the barn door in time, but that was in 1970. You guys have waited to long to make any real difference in our future now. I saw this coming in 1970 when I was driving to work on a cold winter morning in Miami FL. You could see where the multi lane highways were by the purple plume from the car exhausts above them. If pollution like that was visible in a peninsula state with ocean breezes what was happening everywhere else. The first airplane trip I was on from Miami to Memphis I was amazed at the brown smog over the valley cities of Georgia and Tennessee, how could people live there? Now that same brown smog is over most of the country. Sorry folks, you have opened your eyes to late. Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere takes hundreds of years to dissipate, The damage you have done over the last half century is not going away, the only thing that is going to save you now is a time machine that will let you change your past behavior, changing your behavior now will only add a few more years before you reap what you have sown, global mass human migrations and social collapse on a scale never before seen in human history. How do you like them apples?
1
How about Mother Birth Control or Father Prophylactic? The population of Africa has quintupled in the last 60 years and that of South Asia, China, Latin America, and the Middle East tripled or quadrupled. These are rates of increase that are unprecedented in human history or prehistory, as are the social stresses they help to produce.
5
Tom, reading this article at a local Starbucks, where SUV after SUV pulls up and where my Prius is wedged between one monster pick-up and a Porsche. I'm at the point where similar to our culture's love of guns, the same can be said about automobiles and even more troubling, an overall cultural commitment to the belief in the freedom to build where you want, use energy how you want, visit where you want...We Americans appear to be in a purposeful process of destroying our natural habitat---e.g. visit a national park today. No, I'm afraid we Americans are the freedom loving capitalists frogs swimming happily around on a planet where our children will suffer the consequences of selfish ignorance. Should add, Trump would have a field day poking fun at a democratic platform devoted to a saving the planet---"Pocahontas (aka--Senator Warren) over there wants us to return to living in tents--imagine that---living in tents instead of living on my big beautiful golf resorts."
3
Burying your head in the sand (a.k.a. the ostrich defence strategy, which by the way is just a myth) is not really known to be a very successful strategy. Still Trump likes to practice that approach in regards to climate change (and many other things), and additionally to throw dust in our eyes.
There is absolutely no doubt that it will backfire in the long term, with a vengeance. But Trump is not concerned with this because none of his moves is based on long term strategizing. His actions are purely transactional, show business minded and for the very short term.
I have no doubt that the Democrats could use tackling climate change as a winning electoral strategy and I also very much hope they do because the urgency is very real and the clouds gathering are very dark indeed, not just for the US but the for the entire world. So this goes way beyond simple electoral strategizing...
1
"Let Trump fight that idea." The fault in your argument is that Trump doesn't fight ideas, he fosters fantasies. I lay awake at night wondering who will win.
1
Leadership, what a concept!
I would be honored to vote for candidates who stood FOR something and not just continue to watch them hurl invective at one another as we sink in a race to the bottom of a vitriolic cesspool.
Richard Branson and Elon Musk to the contrary, we are not leaving this planet in any meaningful numbers. That experience only belongs to the uber-wealthy.
Healing the planet will help all of us who ride upon it through space and time. In fact, if we can cool things down and stop the juggernaut of climate extremes, it is the poor who will benefit the most.
Mr. Friedman has already pointed out the climate connection to the migration of Syrians to their cities and the subsequent civil upheaval which followed. More climate extremes in the Irrawaddy delta will make a human tsunami of economic migrants in Bangladesh.
And it is not just somewhere else and someone else. This week the Times had an op-doc showing how rich areas would protect themselves with levees for flood control and increase the floods in adjacent poorer areas. We spread our homes into tinder-dry grasslands and they go up in smoke.
We can build our McMansions with elaborate tech and safe rooms but there is no safe rooms for the rape of the planet.
What better legacy can we leave our grandchildren than a planet capable of supporting life!
It is time.
153
@Douglas McNeill
Yes, nearly past time (IPCC AR5 Synthesis Report).
"The Wall" will get built ("Climate Wars", Gwynn Dyer), and we are all now in a political struggle to save enough of the Planet to enable our Grandchildren to have a reasonable fraction of what we take for granted.
Hug your kids, tighten your belt and "do" Green - the rest is dust in the wind. The technology , science and economics are already at hand: we need to rally the collective Will by discussing, debating, canvassing, buying and voting Green. It takes grassroots effort, but for the sake of Civilisation it must be done!
The president has no respect for the natural world, as witness by everything from allowing the dumping of mining waste in streams to relaxing protections against birds. Throw in global warming, and I think we have a winner here.
I'm convinced we are too selfish as individuals to prevent a looming catastrophe for life on the planet as we know it. Maybe a super-bug plague will wipe most of us out before we really ruin the planet for the rest of the species now still living.
Absolutely. Climate change is 1000x the problem of illegal immigration or radical Islamic terrorism. It’s already killed way more people.
How about this. “Have children? Vote Democratic. “. Only one party appears to care about the next generation. The other will happily saddle them with trillions in additional debt, contaminated aquifers, crumbling infrastructure and accelerating climate change. To make additional profit for their wealthy donors - who are not fairly taxed, and many of whom pay pathetically low wages.
How can a person feel OK about socking it to their kids? I guess those who still support the Republicans’ dystopian dynasty can comfort themselves and their children by staring lovingly at their gun collections and their reproductions of religious paintings. (I like guns and religion, too, but in their proper places.)
As I never tire of saying, I used to be a Republican, and hope that before I die I could in good conscience be one again.
2
Mr. Friedman is entirely correct, of course, about the idiocy of Trump’s denials of climate change. The problem with making this a central election issue is that, unfortunately, it is just one of hundreds or thousands of lies told by this president. He’s lied about health care, deficits, taxes, international trade, the environment, social programs, foreign alliances and affairs, his connections with Russians and on and on. Frankly, he has done a masterful job of lying about so many things that no one lie seems to stand out as worse than any other. He has created his own alternative reality in which virtually nothing he says.
So while climate change may wind up destroying the earth, in my view it will not win the election. Better to focus on issues that are simple and easy to understand:
The hard evidence generated by the Mueller investigation.
Trump’s gift of tax cuts to the rich (which are wildly unpopular).
His man-crushes on murderous dictators like Putin and Kim Jung Un and his shameless groveling before them.
His demeaning behavior toward virtually every non-white male group (with women, Hispanics and African Americans being the most prominent targets of his ire).
These issues will align the most voters against Trump and the GOP. We can try to join the Paris Accord after the election, but first we need to win it.
76
@Jack Sonville You do realize that Trump's tax cuts went to all Americans..other than the filthy rich who live in high tax blue states like NY, NJ, CT, and CA?
Here's the irony. Watching Andrew Cuomo and others argue against higher taxes on the millionaires and billionaires as a matter of fairness.
I guess it's true. There is such a thing as Trump Derangement Syndrome.
@Jack Sonville - Focusing on the orange one's delusions and fixations is not how we win in November. That will just fire up his followers.
We need to find out own voice for issues that are important to this nation, which is what, I believe many want to hear and see. We should stay away from fueling the deluded ones and focus on what we want.
1
If you want to tackle global warming, how about zero cats and dogs as pets and zero population growth. These two would allow the USA to reach its climate change goals regarding carbon emissions.
Isn't this a description of the green party's platform? Look what it got them! I am certainly in favor of going all green, and hopefully the Dems will do a political joint venture with the green party such that their votes aren't siphoned away from beating the trump authoritarian party.
Isn't trump aspiring to be a petro-dictator on a global scale by TAKING the oil from our national parks, pristine coasts, Iraq now and Iran eventually?
Unlike Capitalism, or Socialism for that matter, Mother Nature does not get a seat at the table. She will still have the ultimate say on us, but she won't ever be at the table of greed and selfishness.
Capitalism, almost by definition, is NOT SUSTAINABLE.
Nothing will be done. Unless the red tide in Florida somehow reaches and floods Mar de Locos.
“It’s gotten to the point where it’s cheaper to shoot your cows than it is to feed them.” This may be what the wealthy will think of as the rest of us crowd their planet - concentrating around their lush Arctic golf courses and air conditioned mansions.
The progressive left has been awfully slow in making climate change a burning issue for the Democratic party. This is a no brainer. Let’s just assume the majority of people actually care about the future and their children’s and grandchildren’s well being. GH
It was a disgrace to American politics that climate change was completely ignored in the 2016 presidential election. Democrats cannot allow that to happen again. However, Trump and the Republicans are vulnerable on other environmental issues as well. The "deregulation" of the economy, which they tout as some kind of populist job creation policy, is in fact a cover for allowing corporations to wantonly pollute our environment with toxic chemicals. Myopic voters may not pay great mind to long-term climate disruption, but they will care about, say, chlorpyrifos sprayed on their food and damaging their children's brains. Democrats need to educate and energize voters on a broad range of environmental issues.
1
While I agree fully I’m not so sure this country in the age of Trump is ready for anything this intellectually challenging. That is a sad state of affairs but it is where I believe we find ourselves.
While putting solar panels on your roof and making your own electricity and local transportation fuel for an electric car should appeal to conservatives on the grounds you are being self reliant. Decades of Fox News propaganda against clean energy have so poullted the minds of 30-40 percent of Americans seems to be a fools errand.
1
It certainly is possible to win elections on a platform of environmental protection. I did it myself in my hometown back in 1988 and got more votes than GHW Bush, but be warned: all my wetland and forest protection, recycling program development, power efficiency policy projects went right out the window as soon as the local chamber of commerce and home building community noticed me. I was called much worse names than Trump has used in local media, so expect nasty blowback. Grow a thick skin and plow forward with the knowledge that you are on the right side of virtue.
3
I'd spend as much time and effort on convincing the world that we should try to forestall that next billion person increase in the world population.
7
I'm afraid it will be a tough sell. Asking people to vote for short term pain for long term gain is hard. Asking people to vote for personal sacrifice for generalized benefit is harder. To appeal to a wide range of voters the fix has to include some short term payoff, green jobs, global exports, something. Campaigning on higher fees, higher taxes on carbon, and "Job killing regulations" as the conservatives will say, is a tough sell. Jimmy Carter tried it in the late 70's. People laughed at his sweater. If Mother Nature is on the ballot she has to offer some short term, individual payoff. People can just be selfish.
1
It's simple. We live in Seattle where it rains a lot. We put solar on our roof. We bought an electric car. We are net neutral.
We generate enough electricity to run our house and charge our car. The expense of paying for the solar panels will be earned back in savings within 5 to 8 years.
Once every week or two we take longer trips in our ICE car, but at least 6 days out of 7 we use our 2013 electric Leaf for transportation. When we buy a newer electric car with a longer range we can sell our ICE car. But first our country needs to do more work installing charging stations for electric cars.
Remember, we live in the Seattle area where it rains a lot and where we can't see the sky now because of the smoke from BC forest fires. If we can do it here, it can be done everywhere.
But people need help. The expense of installing solar panels is a serious problem for most families. Installing solar is best for them and best for the planet in the long run, but we need help from government programs to get the benefits at scale.
23
Trump's base does not care about climate change.
They want their good paying jobs restored.
Trump has promised to do this and Trump has convinced his base that concern about climate change has cost them their good paying jobs.
To win elections and return Trump's base to the DEmocrats, the Democrats must support policies to help restore the income of the displaced workers.
HRC did NOT do this. None of her proposals [like telling laid off miners to become call center operators at a fraction of their former wage] would provide new jobs that paid wages EQUAL to the wage of the lost job.
Restoring income to the displaced workers will require profound changes to capitalism.
Will Mr. Friedman support such changes.
Connecting everyone to the internet [as MR. Friedman has suggested] will not do that nor will reducing Social Security benefits do that.
Addressing climate change requires defeating Trump and this can only be done if we address the concerns of displaced workers whose support Trump has obtained by making promises he can not keep.
1
@david We don't need everyone in Trump's base to win. Just a few thousand in the right places with a larger Democratic turnout. We can promise more green jobs in certain areas, but we can't promise to replace lost income. It is very unlikely to happen. We don't need to subsidize solar and wind, we need to get Trump's tariffs out of the way and stop subsidizing fossil fuels.
1
"Trump is the president who’s throwing away our umbrella right before the storm."
Donald Trump was clearly never a Boy Scout--but his former Secretary of State was. "Be prepared" is something Trump routinely jettisons for partisan politics.
His push for coal was particularly egregious as to why it was done--to appeal to a fraction of his base unemployed in regions where the coal mines were shuttered, and for good reason--it's no longer a viable form of energy and expensive to mine compared to natural gas.
I like your ideas, Mr. Friedman. I hope Democrats everywhere read it and take note. Like that sci fi film "Interstellar" where the hero leaves a barely sustainable planet earth to explore new planets to cultivate (or ruin, if you think what the GOP has done), the US is fast becoming an unlivable wasteland.
It's no longer "we're running out of time," but the fact we have run out of time. American ingenuity being what it is, it can catch up but only if our political infrastructure allows it.
What a platform: "Make America Livable Again," with all the double entrendres that entails, might just provide the winning ticket.
6
Tom Perez has announced that the Democratic party would accept pac money from fossil fuel industries. Furious, I phoned the national headquarters in DC, but couldn't post the news on Facebook, because the Democratic party is our only hope--we can't afford to split our votes.
Dems barely if ever mention the environment in campaign speeches. Here's a good idea: Dissect the mantra "pro-life." It's not a brand name, like Levis or Kleenex. And the word "life" is perhaps the most important word on Earth. Pro-life voters are often anti-sex ed, contraceptives, and gun regulations. And, sadly, there's a strong correlation between anti choice and anti environment.
Dems need to speak specifically to the crisis we're in, not run away from it. For many reasons it's the biggest issue we face. We need to vote Democratic, but we shouldn't have to hold our noses to do it.
5
China has won the solar panel war.
I wonder how W.Va. is doing with Trump's program to bring back coal? Or is it time for our country to not only develop a renewable energy plan but to include programs to help areas that still rely on fossil fuel as an economic base.
Since our electoral system is rigged to give advantage to rural areas, we must plan to help those areas achieve our goals or they will continue to elect Trumpsters.
1
@tom: U must try to reason like a Cartesian. Read Rene Descartes's "Premieres Meditations,"in English if you must, since I surmise that vast majority of commenters do not know the idiom of Rabelais! There has never been a consensus among scientifiques on the cause(s
)of climate change, and notion that it is "anthropogenic," fancy polysyllabicism for a phenomenon caused by us "humies," has been refuted by hundreds of dissenting men and women of science!Moreover, anyone with "le bon sens du cheval" should conclude that if the world's most notorious polluters, China and India, can just go on polluting and that their cooperation to curb toxic emissions is Voluntary, then was Pres. Trump not right to turn down the Paris Accord!Put to good use the "matiere grise" which the Creator endowed you with, and support the irrefutable logic of refusing to sign an agreement which US would have had to abide by, but not other countries!
Just yesterday, I said to my wife, climate change warnings made 20 years ago,1998, seemed at the time so far off into the future. How fast 20 years went by and unfortunately those warnings have come to fruition. So now predictions are being made for x years into the future. Year 2030, 12 years from now. A blink of the eye. It is happening and it is happening fast. I hope I never have to hear again, climate change is a hoax and bad for the economy from a corporate bought politician.
3
Maybe it is too late. Chances better than not we miscalculated the elasticity of Mother Nature. One day the road goes on forever, the next there is an unexpected cliff, a point of no return. That is the very real danger in climate science. Those dedicated to the subject operate on a set of well grounded assumptions. Precise measures of volatility shaky at best. This summer of excesses may represent new benchmarks, accelerating the need for action, when denial rules the program.
You are on to something here Thomas. Speaking of Sweden, it was reported the average temperature in Stockholm for May 2018 was a two in one million year event. We just returned from a week in Iceland. We spoke with tourists from Tel Aviv, North Carolina, southern Europe, England. Everyone we spoke with were relieved the temperature was 50 degrees. We were all escaping oppressively hot conditions in our own back yards. Like elsewhere, the glaciers are receding in Iceland, some as much as 200 meters a year. They will be gone in 75 years. But, no matter what happens in 2020, I fear Republicans will just reverse any sensible climate change legislation passed by Democrats. Not to be a pessimist, but what you have described happening in 2018 makes me believe the world should have switched to solar and other renewable energy sources long ago at a much faster pace. Humans (especially those that govern) tend to use hindsight much more than foresight in their decision-making.
3
This is not the first time that I suggested that Tom Friedman run for President. We desperately need principled, intelligent, informed leadership, coupled with decency and humanity.
We are a country of 325+ million people. Surely there is at least one more individual who fills the bill!,
Unfortunately, there is a segment of the US population that views these qualities as something to be derided.
Mr. Friedman is knowledgeable about science, technology, international relations, economics and has an awareness of the world that is so sorely lacking in Donald Trump.
So “sad” that our country has a leader who is tearing it apart and destroying all that has been accomplished since the end of the second World War.
13
If we, as a species, do not better manage the resources that Mother Nature has provided, She WILL step in and manage them for us.
And the results may not be to our liking.
6
Yes it's been a hot summer. And yes, we had persistent cold & snow through most of April. It was only four years ago that this same paper ran an op-ed entitled "The End of Snow?" only to see the next few winters be among the snowiest US winters in decades. Please find something far more important to opine about.
2
@Keith
Our snowiest winters in decades are an unanticipated result of climate change - that op-ed ran with a question mark at the end for a reason. Finland didn’t expect temperatures in the 80s this summer, either. However, I agree that whether earth ends up getting fried or freezes in a new ice age is unimportant. The Space Force will secure new and better planets for us. Now THAT is something important!!!
3
@Keith. That’s precisely the kind of narrow thinking that Trump counts on from his supporters. Science teaches us that these intense swings are part of climate change, not evidence that the heating of the planet is a political fantasy. The destruction of the planet we live on strikes me as something reasonably important to “opine about.”
6
... there is nothing more important. I guess you think adding a few degrees to your body temperature is no big deal either.
We are biological. We are not rocks or plastic trash we live as biological entities. This is a simple math issue it is averaging. It is overall hotter or it is not.
This does not depend on a local snowfall or heat wave. No?
2
Trump doesn't fight issues, he fights people. Tariff wars are not designed to right the economic engine, they are designed to punish foreign ne'r-do-wells.
The same goes with regulation, of which climate policy is a type. He is not destroying regulation to remove unnecessary economic impediments, they are designed to reward Trump friends and punish his enemies. He wants to punish California and reward coal miners.
He won the election by defining his enemies, and by describing is moves in terms of their defeat. It's mano-y-mano. And it's working.
The strategy defined here is asking to bring a fast car to a boat race. Not gonna work.
We need an argument of peace and effectiveness. You have to make a very strong argument for peace - it is no longer a given, and a strong argument for effectiveness. You can't just say - "Take this pill, it's safe", you need to say "Take this pill, it's safe and effective."
Any candidate should start from wherever they think they have the strongest argument for effectiveness, and then work out a strong argument for peace, and finally lead with the peace argument.
It's like Frank Borman said about Apollo - people weren't all that interested in space exploration, but they sure did want to beat the Russians. We need to beat the war/fear-mongers, in the context of making things better.
2
I concur. What we need is a leader with a vision of what could be. Imagine rallying the country behind the idea we "could do this, saving mother nature".
4
Great article and thoughts. I wish i could run on that platform but too old -80. Thanks!
Mary rinehart
5
Sadly, Mr. Friedman makes his argument with the assumption that the American public is scientifically literate enough to discern the difference between propaganda and science. It hasn't happened yet. So far, the forces of denial have won too many battles.
10
"Trump has no answer for that. He doesn’t believe the climate science that NASA is telling him is true."
Belief has nothing to do with this. It would be far more accurate to write that Mr. Trump, like many others, doesn't accept the science of climate change.
With science, one can accept data, or refute it with other data. It's time to stop referring to this as a belief. 'Belief' lies in the realm of the intangible, mystical, spiritual, world. Science is data, not belief.
2
@retired physicist
Trump sees that denying climate change helps him with his coal loving, gas-guzzling, base - both at the corporate level, and at the monster truck fan level. That is the data he is working from. It is safe to assume he is not a complete idiot and believes the data NASA is giving him is true, but with Trump, truth has no special value. Everything is either to his advantage or not, and according to his data, there is no advantage to him in acknowledging the facts regarding climate change. It isn’t an issue of belief or acceptance, it’s simply Trump telling lies that suit his purposes.
1
Please stop promoting the "clean energy" narrative as all energy generation has environmental costs. Solar and Wind are no more renewable than natural gas and crude oil and much less efficient. By oversimplifying the issue to solely carbon emissions is about the worst thing you can do from an environmental protection standpoint. It takes a tremendous amount of natural resources to make turbines, wind mills and solar panels as well as land usage.
The one fuel that is nonrenewable within the carbon cycle is coal. Coal was formed millions of years before microbes evolved and could fully breakdown plants. The planet doesn't make coal anymore.
Carbon emissions are going to rise with the greening of the planet and going to have an effect on global climate. As reforestation occurs because of great advances in agriculture and better land usage. That is going to impact climate. Burning of fossil fuels is a small part of that equation, but so is plant respiration, forest fires, and plant and leaf decay.
We should strive for efficiency such as implementing geothermal heating and cooling in the NE United States and Europe as that holds the promise of decreasing enormous amounts of electricity needed especially at peak demand. More efficient cars and more importantly car usage will further reduce our needs for fossil fuels.
1
@John You're trolling, right? Solar and wind are no more renewable than crude oil and natural gas? Putting aside the enormous damage that fracking does to the environment, and that burning fossil fuels has already done, the sun is free, doesn't need to be mined, pipelined, or released into the atmosphere, isn't owned by Exxon, BP, or Citibank, and truly isn't going anywhere, for the duration of the human race's time on this planet.
In a public setting, you are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own set of facts.
1
@Jack from Saint Loo
Strip mining for rare earth minerals, bird kills, land usage, PV disposal which is toxic enough it has to be diverted from landfills. One hurricane in Puerto Rico shattered 40% of the PV's in a 100 acre solar farm, where did all that cadmium go...
Um, where did all the petroleum go? And the petroleum fumes? Isn't it hot in your neighborhood?
Honestly, I don't see how the Trump/Koch Bros, far right political position, which you seem to represent, can survive in a democracy. People are getting tired of being sick, hot, hurricane-infested, infected with Zika and who-knows what else, while an actual Senator from Oklahoma carries a fake snowball onto the Senate floor.
Thank you for helping to point out what has become very obvious. Democrats need to emphasize climate change as they compare trump and his science denying followers that embrace expensive climate destroying policy and ignore real world examples of climate change in dollars and cents to examples of money saving long term plans to save our environment. The only issue that trump and republicans understand is money. If the bottom line of their bank accounts is not going up they will be in opposition to anything reasonable. We need to change the equation. Democrats need to appeal to the greed on the right with selling the cost benefit to the public of climate policy. We need to speak in their language of money. It is the only one they truly understand.
3
Lofty and pragmatic. You aim high, Mr. Friedman and your words took me back to JFK when he challenged Americans to back an effort to put a man on the moon. The country rallied behind him.
Democrats need leaders who can articulate what you espouse in ways that appeal to our better angels. I beleive those people are somewhere right now: bright, open, eloquent and independent thinkers not tied to dogma who love America and are willing to lead an effort to save us. A perfect contrast to the madness that occupies the White House now.
21
Two further sales pitches.
While our need for energy, like our need for food and water, increases with increasing population, our need for energy is unique in also increasing with increasing complexity in human society. This increase in demand will far exceed the demand for more air conditioners for a more populous planet.
Implementing technologies for meeting clean energy demand will require industries that are labor intensive. If one of the major challenges facing the world economies is the need for jobs, our growing need for clean renewable energy offers one solution.
Thank you Mr Friedman for suggesting the time is right to our Mother Nature on the National ballot.
4
For many years I saved a copy of a National Geographic magazine published in the late 1970s dealing primarily with energy issues and global warming. After about 40 years and several moves I can’t find it anymore. I’d love to re-read that issue and compare what was predicted back then with the reality of now. I’ll bet the magazine and scientists were pretty well on the money... we knew this was coming, but like most things that humans do, we put off doing anything much about it.
6
Climate change will cause more droughts which will cause more famines which will cause more migration which will cause more warfare. The peoples of the world simply have to recognize that we all have to join together to prevent the ravages that capitalism is creating. Warfare is the common enemy of all humanity and the only way to prevent it is by respecting international law. In order to understand how capitalism is threatening the survival of planet Earth I recommend reading Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything.
10
@Robert Dole
Most depressing book I ever read because she's completely convincing and says that to save the planet we must defeat global capitalism within 7 years. That was 4 years ago.
Renewable energy and conservation can be an exciting challenge. And fun. It is not fun to stop for gas and fill up. The receipt is discouraging. Wars and destruction should be illegal, a complete waste of energy. Family planning should be free everywhere and should have been available free for the last fifty years. Post ALL government revenues and spending on the internet and let sunshine do some good. There seems to be too much of it outdoors.
2
Thanks for writing about climate change. It has not been covered to the extent it should be, in large part because of the ongoing outrage-a-minute political dumpster fire in the White House, as well as a general unwillingness to make the structural changes needed to fight back.
It should be noted, however, when slighting Democratic Socialism, that capitalism has created and is perpetuating the climate crisis. It will not be possible to adequately address the escalating onslaught of wildfires and flooding within the existing political and economic framework.
3
As Bernie Sanders said in his 2016 presidential campaign, "the debate about climate change is over." But actually, the evidence for it dates back to 1980's, when Exxon conducted research which concluded that man-made climate change was a reality which would only get worse. Exxon's decision to suppress the evidence of their own research is indefensible, but perhaps even worse is that the GOP pretends that global warming is still a matter of debate when in truth it's a global crisis that threatens human survival. I agree that putting out the fire of global warming must be the top priority for any responsible political party. But at some point, we need to hold the arsonists responsible, as well.
14
A very compelling article. I am a borderline voter who would easily be swayed if a candidate focused his agenda on the climate. If a democrat makes it the fourth or fifth on his or her list, after income inequality, democratic socialism, etc., I will not be driven to vote for them. The saving of our climate "trumps" all other issues since without our planet what else matters. So democrats, really focus on climate change, its impact on our lives and the potential industries that can grow from green technology, and you have my vote!
20
@Jim You sound like the third party voters that gave us trump. So you can be pure and not vote for a democrat who does not put climate first on his list of concerns. I'm relieved that we won't have a moderate democrat but another republican funded by fossil fuel interests. By the way, my husband and I are ultra-conservationalists. Almost all our contributions go to groups working to save our earth and a good democrat who is running against Scott Perry in the 10th district in Pa. His name is George Scott.
Look him up. He intelligent, moral and has many concerns. I have no doubt once he is in the House he will vote to address climate change.
This is yet another bread and butter issue that appeals to independents and young people, and these are the cohorts needed to win future elections. It is sad and frustrating, but the intransigence of the Flat Earth Society Republicans is not likely to change as long as the polluters continue to be a major funding source of their party. I think it may be time to ignore them and simply target those that are not usually politically active - they overwhelmingly support Dems on the issues and just need to be turned out on Election Day. Hopefully the band of misfits in the White House will be enough to push the apolitical and first-timers to the polls.
4
Whenever I get too wound up about the events in DC, I try to comfort myself with the thought that Mother Nature is getting ready to wallop us so hard that all we'll be able to do is deal with her extremes and try to survive. Who is President, what laws are passed or dissolved, what the Court decides, will all be moot points. They can continue to deny it as long as they want. But no one, not even the super rich, will be able to escape the coming consequences.
22
How anyone can vote for a climate change denier in this age is beyond me. But they did. Republicans don't seem to care about the issue and most seem to not even understand what is at stake. It is up to the media and our high schools to educate them. Along with switching to green energy, getting an electric car and turning down the thermostat, giving up meat and not wasting food, buying locally and flying as little as humanly possible goes a long way while we push for wiser leaders.
5
We can certainly talk about Lyme disease. Diseases carried by ticks and fleas and mosquitos will increase due to climate change, more people will die, more people will live with the nasty symptoms. I have a friend on the east coast and a niece in Alaska who both have Lyme disease and they are miserable. According to studies ... this will increase as the earth warms.
The more people are suffering, the less fake news can cover it up. What if agent orange or a family member gets Lyme disease? Should be a quick turn around.
3
@Gail JacksonWithout wanting to downplay what your friend and neice are going through, Lyme Disease may well be on the list of "nasty" but definitely not catastrophic. Climate change will force people to give up their homes due to rising ocean levels, areas in the MIdwest will become uninhabitable as they revert to the deserts they once were, and as drought makes any kind of farming and ranching virtually impossible. Storms will become even more severe and frequent...
Forest fires will further increase the release of CO2, exacerbating the situation. And - there won't be some hero who is going to appear out of nowhere to make things right again. This is no science fiction film, or a new Avengeres one, this is reality, and America had better wake up.
4
The bigger question is, will capitalism survive climate change.
The one thing we know is that capitalism cannot survive without growth. It enters recession, the depression then collapse, with social mayhem, because the entire underpinning of a healthy society is emloyment
Without growth, these are no jobs under capitalism.
But then, analyse climate chaos - we are at the limits - everywhere we look, the limits have been breached - mass extinction of species, elimination of insects, emptying of the seas, death of the Reefs, bushfires in every country, droughts everywhere ...
The planet is telling is .. No More!
The Denialists believe that technology will somehow rescue us - but even if we cut emission by half, capitalism will simply expand into the space and we will spend the rest of our time grinding along with enormous costs and low growth, high debt and increasingly recurrent business collapses.
And eventually, capitalism will slide into fascism, war, background by climate chaos and natural disasters that seriously deplete food stocks and generate civil unrest.
There won't be relief - the die has been cast - we are in for at least two hundred years of chaos, even if we switch off all carbon today, because that's how long it to to create this chaos.
But capitalism has no answers at all. Its best hope is new technology ... but all it will do is create a few moments breathing space and another billion mouths to feed
16
There's several problems with Climate Change as an issue for Democrats.
1) The media is still reluctant to connect the dots, even though what is called attribution science is progressing rapidly. They know they will be attacked for "fake news" and "liberal bias". And if they do report honestly...
2) It has become an article of faith among people who support Trump and Republicans in general that climate change is a hoax, and/or there's nothing we can do about it anyway.
3) The Republican Party, right wing media, and the Big Money behind them both have all chosen to make it a partisan issue for political advantage and because of ideology.
Climate change is a genuine existential threat - but the GOP has spent decades casting Democrats in that role. They have embraced denialism - because the alternative is to admit Liberals are right, and that science and government are the solution to our problems.
As Kevin Drum has noted, the modern GOP exists only to cut taxes and de-regulate corporations. They are incapable of solving real problems. So what it comes down to is, can Democrats cash the "reality check" Mother Nature is handing them?
What is still largely unrecognized is that while the western US is burning because of climate change, the east is being flooded out.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/13/1788022/-The-West-may-have-Fi...
The GOP has nothing; Democrats do. Run with it.
8
@Larry Roth
It's necessary to remember that the religious right, who dominate a significant portion of the Republican Party, believe that this is all part of god's design. They refute the well-established Evolution and anything else that science proves.
As long as religion sets their agenda they will not budge.
5
@Jim Gordon If Religion truly set their agenda, the Religious Right would never have allowed the party to run a candidate who is a compulsive liar, sexual predator, and repeatedly unfaithful to his marriages.
Whether it's about God, Money, or Race - all they want is privilege and power over others. If the planet burns, they don't care as long as they are ruling over the rubble.
Even if the Mother Nature appears on the ballot of 2020 Trump and his Republican minions will shout vote tampering and rigging forcing a recount until n.ew ballot is issued. Even otherwise, elections are no longer won on issues rather how best to obfuscate the issues through distortion and denial even if it be the climate change.
3
Weather is always a matter of probability. A few torrential rains will always happen. But it seems we are getting more of them than we used to, and this greater probability is due to global warming.
Scientists should be saying loud and clear that they cannot assign any particular torrential rain to global warming, but that they can assign the fact that we have more of them than a few decades ago to global warming rather than the usual chaotic variation of climate.
4
I keep waiting for our planet's situation to become so dire that leaders mention that taboo topic. That of Birth Control. But they won't do that because it's not politically expedient. And besides, as long as you have a civilization that is built around the finite concept of Capitalism nothing will change.
12
@Valerie Wells
Looks like many American women have already decided that nows not the time to bring new life into the world. The continually falling birth rate will forestall any need for politicians to bring up the topic.
There are two main kinds of environmental advocates — those who take on the deniers and those who take on the environment. Only one of the two is politically effective.
I think she’s operating in subtle ways too. Have you heard of the tick bite that causes allergy to red meat? (Cows being a huge source of greenhouse gases.) they call it Alpha Gal. I say that’s a cool nickname for Mother Nature.
5
As Friedman says in this opinion climate change should be on the ballot for the upcoming midterm elections. It is no longer acceptable to have candidates who are climate deniers and show inaction on climate change. After record wildfires, high temperatures, hurricanes and flooding the impacts of climate change are clear for us all to see.
The president has withdrawn the US from the Paris Accord, reduced the EPA budget, and attempted to deregulate many environmental protections that provide us with clean air and clean water that preserve, protect and sustain our environment
We should all strongly support those candidates this November that support clean energy technologies like wind, solar, and promote energy efficiency. There are many jobs in renewable energy generation. Let these technologies lead the way as this opinion piece says to a zero carbon grid, zero-emission vehicles, zero-net energy buildings, and zero-waste manufacturing.
15
Ignoring climate change guarantees that climate refugees will be on the doorsteps of every industrialized country. People in Sub Saharan Africa are already concluding there is no place to go but north.
Humanitarians can rally around the issue but so too will immigration opponents already opposed to letting more people enter their countries.
It’s time that politicians that deny climate change or are indifferent to its effects should be voted out of office.
26
What you don't understand is that rural communities do not want the negative impacts of industrial installations like wind turbines. You don't even know the negative impacts. You don't know that most of the land signed to wind turbines is by people that do not live on the land so that it is the rural residents that get the short end of the stick. Our town governments want the money so they ignore our protests.
Maybe a few of you think that this is worth it to "save the planet". In 2016 AWEA boasted that wind turbines avoid 159 million metric tons of CO2. On Statista.com it shows that global CO2 from energy and concrete is 35-40 Billion metric tons of CO2 a year. So by their best boast they can't even avoid over 1% of the yearly CO2 if they doubled the turbines we had in 2016. Warren Buffet's MidAmerican has admitted they will receive $10 Billion in Tax Credits for their small part of this. Other companies will receive the same if not more.
5
@Janna
We also do not understand that rural communities do not mind droughts or heat waves or getting their yearly rainfall in a few bursts, because God sent these and He knows what He is doing.
14
Anyone who cares about the environment should want severe limits on immigration. The current situation is untenable, as it floods the US with millions of new consumers, ratcheting up the population to over 400 million. This means more paved roads, more SUV's, more fossil fuels being burned BUT fewer wetlands, fewer forests and fewer endangered species.
When did the Left suddenly become pro-big business and pro-GDP growth? Whatever happened to environmental conservation and Zero Population Growth...you know, sustainability?
You can have mass immigration or you can have environmental protection, but you can't have both.
13
@Helvetico
You can have the earth's present and projected population or you can have environmental protection? People are immigrating here because their native regions are becoming unlivable, too hot and dry to sustain agriculture.
Either we change the way we live worldwide, or we have a population crash. The dying will take place elsewhere, and we get to watch from behind the walls we will have to erect. We will need new religions to make us feel good about all this -- religions that preach that some are lucky and some unlucky and the lucky should accept their luck and not share it with the unlucky.
We have gotten stranger doctrines from the Bible.
7
@Helvetico
Your argument seems to be that immigrants, if forced to stay home, remain too poor to consume things like gas guzzling SUVs and therefore keeping them poor is good for the fight against global warming. So the US, as part of its fight of global warming, should keep as much of the rest of the world as poor as possible? Is that what you're saying? That would certainly be consistent with the Trump's America First philosophy.
1
@Helvetico. You seem to have forgotten that it’s the total population of earth, not just the US or any other individual country, thus immigration from any one country to another has no value in this discussion.
The real world has a way of getting ahead of Presidents.
Automakers plan to offer electric versions of every model by 2025, because there already is a global competition for vehicles with good driving range and very low refueling costs. The fuel economy standards Trump wants to freeze at 2020 levels may be obsolete by 2025.
LED lighting is rapidly replacing incandescent, skipping over unpopular, unreliable and toxic CFC bulbs. The Obama light bulb mandate that Trump proudly overturned did not require CFCs or LEDs, but a modestly more efficient incandescent. Again, public policy fighting the last war.
Coal power generation is being replaced by natural gas, wind and solar, even as the GOP tries to gut the Clean Power Act and allow coal ash despoilation.
Most private sector organizations know that public policy is notoriously fickle in the US, so they try to assess long term trends and competitive conditions and plan accordingly.
The laggards like Murray Energy will try to lobby their way out of a hole, with predictable results.
That is why they are laggards.
22
@Look Ahead
Trump with the aid of almost all Republican Congressmen have done nothing to fight global warming. Yes, efficiency is driving change to more environmental friendly products. That still does not give Trump and the Republicans license to do everything to slow this change. NYT recently had an article that chronicled how it was known with certainty since the late 1980's that man was releasing CO2 and other green house gases leading us to a catastrophe if we continued on the path we were on. We should have moved aggressively to mitigate climate change decades ago. Ronald Reagan appointed James Watt, a fossil fuel advocate as Interior Secretary. Republicans have been consistently environmentally irresponsible. There is no excusing them by saying that the market will solve this. We need strong support and action from our government.
7
If the Biblical Ten Plagues couldn't convince Pharoah, it's not likely climate change ("mother nature") will have any more success with Trump.
So you're arguing that the Democrats need a Moses figure?
12
I agree that the whole pattern of extreme weather events is climate change, and that humans are a key cause, and that humans can and should do something about it. I also agree Trump won't.
Okay, so exactly who is having extreme weather events in the US? Only people who voted against Trump last time, and there was never any doubt they would again.
Trump voters are not having extreme weather events that they notice in the same way.
Trump voters don't care about, or certainly don't vote on, Sweden's or Japan's extreme weather.
Friedman here is preaching to the choir. Then again, nobody reads him but his choir.
But don't expect California weather extremes to defeat Trump.
10
@Mark Thomason
Florida is having one of if not the worst red tide algae bloom ever. Will the Red State of Florida ever repudiate the Republican climate deniers? Environmental disasters made worse by global warming affect red and blue states alike.
@Mark Thomason California??? Have you read about the bouts of severe flooding in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey in the past FEW DAYS??? How about record heat in AZ and NM?
1
I hope that Mr. Friedman is right but I think that he is overly optimistic. Trump is cultivating an electorate that is anti-science. Historically, science and technology have never been at odds with a person's personal faith in America but Trump and many, but not all, GOP politicians have made it so. However, scientific truths are stubborn and its consequences will come regardless spins from politicians. While we are still leading in science and technology, this toxic climate will surely erode our position with long term economic consequences.
6
@Peter -- "Historically, science and technology have never been at odds with a person's personal faith in America"
Scopes Monkey Trial?
Slavery?
Immigration's Yellow Peril, or anti-Catholicism, or anti-Semitism?
We've had no end of science denial of personal faith, and too often it wasn't science that won either.
7
Americans have never voted on primarily on environmental issues. Name one election where the environment mattered? They vote on pocketbook issues and now race and healthcare.
Alas, the environment is a second tier of issues that matter greatly but people don't vote on along side issues such as housing and transportation.
This saddens me to no end.
2
@skinny and happy
Everyone is aware of climate change. It is obvious if you are even a young adult. That people do not take it as the most serious problem we face, is a failure of our media to inform us of the seriousness and the need for action. Right wing media such as Fox News and every other right wing outlet are climate deniers. Rush Limbaugh has been attacking 'tree huggers' for decades. The NYT has been more responsible than many media organizations in featuring environmental stories. There is a tipping point when people will demand action.
Venus had oceans where it now has fire and Earth is fast approaching a tipping point of mass extinctions. Either we all become Nordics with negative carbon emissions or we have the future outlined in the magnificent Times magazine survey of environmental end times. We'll become toast, burned toast.
11
Almost nobody's primary issue is climate change. It didn't motivate voters before, it doesn't now, and it won't in 2020. It certainly won't motivate borderline Republicans to switch parties.
Race, immigration, taxes, healthcare, politics will beat it out every time.
2
@Zack MD -- "It certainly won't motivate borderline Republicans to switch parties."
That is not a path to victory anyway.
Converting Republicans by being almost Republican is a loser's game, and that's why it lost.
What is needed is to motivate the vast numbers of people who don't vote, at least those on the left who'd vote for environmental issues. That will require more issues, but there are many more issues available.
Environment can come along for the ride to the win.
12
If we lose the oceans to warming and acidification, a large part of the human population will die. Much of the world subsists on fish. Phytoplankton photosynthesis is estimated to account for between 50% to 85% of the planet's oxygen.
Global warming will force those on land to adapt to sea-level rise and extreme storm events, driven in part by the disruption of ocean circulation patterns (e.g., the Gulf Stream current). There will be ever more extremes with heat and cold, severe droughts, floods, and wildfires leading to large-scale population displacements and associated war, famine, disease, and death.
The military is well aware that global warming and climate change are serious issues for national defense. Already military bases are being closed and moved because of rising sea levels.
Humans are not very good at long-term planning, and that is what is most needed with climate change. It has us in a pot on slow boil, and we seem too complacent to bother trying to jump out. Ultimately, we need to be able to overcome our greed and stupidity -- that is, ourselves -- and that may prove simply beyond our capabilities. If so, Mother Nature will cull the herd: problem solved, one way or another.
We are a destructive species, and we are wreaking havoc on other species around us. That is a tragedy for them, but also for us, as we cannot survive without them. In the end, Earth will survive us. It's a matter of whether or not we will survive the planet we are creating.
120
@Blue Moon
I agree with so much of what you say.
I still hope more people will watch the documentary "The Age of Consequences." It is excellent and perhaps will change some minds.
1
Let's see if I have this right. The dems have to win the election, reverse the madness committed by Pruitt, undo all of the Trump policies including helping coal fired plants, remove CO2 from the air, educate deniers, persuade the rest of the world to join in, and more?
No problem, just elect enough women like Ocasio Cortez across America and consider it done!
7
"Does anyone — other than Trump — believe that America can continue to dominate the world economy and not lead the next great global industry, but leave that to China?"
Undeniably profound. Topic A until Mid Century.
Global warming is the greatest challenge ever to the survival of our species, but it will be an even larger social, economic, cultural, and political challenge to take timely action to avoid the cataclysmic effects of global warming, especially winning the race against runaway emissions from the thawing permafrost in the Arctic.
Mr. Trump is so small in comparison to this challenge, that I think it would be unwise to put hope in the persuasive power of a single leader having the persuasive powers to shift away from fossil fuels to non-fossil energy.
The 20th C. demonstrates that capitalism drives the innovation and invention to meet the necessity for humanities survival. The new technologies will be selected by the invisible hand of the market. Non-fossil technologies must return to capital more than fossil fuels.
Wise scientists, like James Powell, the inventor of Superconducting Maglev, envision electric transport and cheap electricity driving our standard of living. He believes, at 9 Billion population scale, internationally, we will need to develop space-based solar power, launched by SC Maglev, he has described this solution in 100s of papers and 3 books but let this remarkable scientist share his thoughts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0-npDJlxCA
3
If the question is whether you can talk too much about climate change, the answer is yes. There is something distasteful about those who enjoy talking from dawn to dusk about our impending doom.
3
@michjas
We have people who spend their days talking about climate change that is what they do and we pay them to do it because that is what they are trained to do. The problem is those who won't spend the five minutes listening to what they are saying and the rich and powerful who pay for the noise used to block out their voices.
4
I would hit Republicans on debt, which they obviously can't get enough of. Debt enslaves the young, which the GOP clearly hates. And that includes climate debt (i.e. just because 10 feet of sea level rise hasn't showed up at our doors yet, doesn't mean the debt hasn't already been incurred). Cheney said that deficits don't matter. The GOP has acted for 40 years now as if that were true. Democrats need to hit the fact that Cheney meant to say they don't matter 'to him', because of his age. When younger people start losing their children to 'Wars for oil', because the dollar needs to be pegged to barrels of oil to cover the fact that the producers of dollars are bankrupt, they will understand that the word 'enslaves' is not used lightly, above. Vote Democratic or lose your freedom. It's that simple.
33
@Phil
You should go door to door trying to get votes by talking about the debt. I predict that after 3 doors you go to Plan B.
For well over 100 years the US has led each technological revolution. It went big into railways and fortunes were made. Henry Ford and GM led the world in cars. The Wright Brothers started up the massive aerospace industry. IBM led the US into leadership of IT. All of those were "disruptor" industries that went on to make lots of money for the US.
Now, for the first time, the US has chosen to defend the old fossil fuel industries and allow others to lead the booming renewables business.
It's as if they decided to block Henry Ford in order to protect the horse breeding business. Complete economic lunacy.
81
@Michael O'Farrell
It was Ronald Reagan who tore the solar panels off the White House roof.
In 1945 the nuclear reactor at Chalk River Ontario was opened . In 1952 the reactor suffered a meltdown and a team of nuclear experts went into that reactor to save our bacon. In 1976 one of that team was elected President. Jimmy Carter understood energy and he understood fossil fuels. He turned down the thermostat, put solar panels on the roof and put on a a sweater and America elected a script reader in 1980.
Things ain't gonna change. Script reader to reality television superstar. America has no more room for scientists, philosophers and wise men as you build your time machine.
2
Thank you for this column, Thomas Friedman! It may be the most important one you've written, and my favorite. I'll vote for Mother Nature every time. Without her, we're nothing.
25
Whatever it takes to get Trump out of the White House, this reader is for it. But surely there has to be a better way than putting two more summers like this one (in which Montreal alone has already lost close to a hundred people from the relentless heat) on the Democrat's wish list.
5
@Leigh
I hope you don't mind being corrected. It has been the hottest summer in Quebec of my 70 years and I don't remember a summer like this when growing up in Montreal but it is all of Quebec that lost 100 people and it is here where I live between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire that we lost the most people per capita.
This is not surprising . Who had air conditioning ? Who ever needed Air Conditioning? It seemed like a few months ago New Hampshire had its coldest temperatures of all time and you couldn't take the mountain tour because the fuel was freezing.
Leigh I don't know how old you are but it was the GOP and Reagan with the help and complicity of much of the world who brought us to this place and Johnny Trump is just a Johnny come lately. Thirty eight years ago there were solar panels on the White House and an engineer scientist, leader and wise man in the White House.
@Memphrie et Moi
Thanks for the correction. Sorry times we find ourselves in.
Let's face it. Climate change has been on the ballot for two decades and it's never been a closer. The problem is just too complex for feel-good, soundbite solutions that drive voters to the polls.
Democrats need to focus on the selfish here and now --healthcare, jobs and better wages to get the votes we need to tackle long-term existential threats.
5
Agreed. In fact, global warming is the only issue that really matters. Unless Republicans and Corporate executives have some spare planet to live on it's hard to understand them backing a president who wants to burn coal for energy: just like we did 200 years ago. Unless Republicans ad corporate executives don't care about the lives of their children and grandchildren, how can they campaign against clean, carbonless energy.
28
I CAN THINK OF NO OTHER ISSUE that would be more influential among the young of the party. First, because it's one issue that the milennials are not indifferent to; second, because even the next few months will show a perceptible increase in excitement over this issue, and finally, Trump, his entire administration and the Republican congress will be caught with NO effective response, because the history of Republicans is virtual devoid of any real opportunity to roll back their horrible out-in-the-open, aggressive record on this issue. MOTHER NATURE MIGHT EVEN THROW IN AN OCTOBER SURPRISE!
63
Mother Nature has been on the ballot for quite some time now, but since the heat was still on, the wheels of commerce were still turning, who cares about what may or may not happen after we die?
But bigger wheels have been set in motion and this is happening now. And I'm sorry but all this Sturm and Drang coming on the heels of we don't wanna know for decades now, is infuriating. Where we you all when it might have mattered? The only thing we can do now is start to deal intelligently with the consequences of our laziness. There is no fixing this anymore.
The vast aquifer that lies in the great outback of your country has been sucked almost dry thanks to big boys like the Saudis who drill deep and grow mega fields of alfalfa to feed their dairy cows at home. It took thousands of years to fill and only a scant hundred to empty. When it's gone it won't be coming back in time to even rescue our great great great grandchildren. And that's just one example.
How do we deal intelligently with that reality? I'm afraid far too few people are putting their minds to work in that reality because they're still too invested in what they have and want to keep. I guess that's human nature but that pitted against Mother Nature is a mighty puny force as we are finding out.
30
If Mother Nature is on the ballot in 2020, we Americans are far too hyper-individualistic, mercenary, and short-sighted to vote in her favor. It's going to take a real catastrophe to wake us up. As Pogo famously said, "We have met the enemy, and it is us.".
7
Tom, if you or anyone else thinks that Americans or human beings anywhere on this planet are selfless enough to change so that their kids and grandkids can live to see another generation you are just kidding yourself. We won’t even pay for regulations and oversight to keep our bridges from falling down! This species is doomed by our own stupidity and greed.
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@B. Rothman
Maybe when we are caring for our relatives who are afflicted by Lyme Disease some deniers will change?
Is that too much to ask? If so, I fervently hope they will get this disease and other family members will ignore them.
I don't want to be mean ... but these people are asking for it.
Humanity is not doomed, necessarily, by our stupidity and greed. Humans also possess empathy, kindness, generosity, and hope. 50/50. It's a choice. Let's make it. I can't make another person choose wisely. It is up to all of us individually. It is possible.
Your thoughts are undoubtedly sound, and already put into action elsewhere on this planet. But the stupidity of the current U.S. administration 'a la Trump' is a 'killer' for not taking responsibility, and stewardship, of the ravages of man-made climate change. Don't you think that these United States, the largest polluter on Earth (along with China) is being very unjust with poorer countries...unable to defend themselves as well as 'we' can, from the natural disasters (fires, droughts, floods) we are making worse in frequency and intensity? Can our brutus ignoramus, arrogant to the extreme, be allowed to ignore purposefully what reality is already biting on our 'behind', crystal clear for anybody willing to wake up and with the will to do something about it? Can we afford to ignore Nature, of which we are an integral part of, and of which we depend for our own survival? Wasn't enough irresponsibility, on our part, to elect such an unscrupulous thug, intent in destroying all we hold dear, even the trust we used to have in democratic institutions? You mentioned the possibility of this charlatan trying to be re-elected in 2020? If that were to occur, due to our anomie, then we shall certainly deserve him (Ughhh!).
3
4 Zeros - 4 Yeses.
8.6 billion of us in 18 years. What is the carrying capacity of earth?
7
@turbot Population control is an important issue no one in politics is discussing.
@turboto. A lot less. The u.s. Is vastly over populated now as is the planet. The decline of almost every other species proves it. Of coarse no one can talk about it because the left likes lots of immigrants and the right likes lots of babies. Some even think because we still have standing room we aren't over populated. The numbers say otherwise and they will have the last word.
Just report that the makers of statins are Democrats. Trump will denounce cardiologists. The WSJ will report on the nutritional benefits of chocolate doughnuts. The Republicans will give tax breaks to delis and steakhouses because they serve red meat. Social media will be filled with commentary on why exercise is bad for you. The Trumpsters will die from heart disease. Dems rule.
3
It was criminal that the 2016 presidential debates excluded climate change! That was the fault of the debate moderators! That cannot happen again!
13
New York Times readers know what's going on in the world. Sadly, lots of Americans don't know or don't care about what's going on. If Great Britain is roasting and Greece has forest fires, so what? I'm out and about, I know what people are saying in red America. They still don't believe there is a crisis and they don't care about it if the crisis is happening elsewhere.
Usually, about this time of year, it will be 100 degrees or more 20 or so days of the summer in Oklahoma. This summer has been fairly mild. To people who don't follow what's going on in the world, that's proof there is nothing wrong. Papers like The Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City will never admit there is climate change. How do you get to people who only read The Daily Oklahoman and only watch Fox? They don't believe in climate change and when they see the proof, they don't care.
204
@Linda
In the upper midwest it's been hot. Days and days of heat in the high 90s with no rain in sight for about 2 months.
We finally got some rain and the temperature rolled back to the high 80's. But this is not even remotely normal weather for here.
At one point I lived in Los Angeles. The other day I came out of a shop and was hit by a blast of hot dry air that reminded me of the San Fernando Valley in the summer.
We are long past weird and well into dangerous.
2
@Linda you hit the nail on the head . they are drunk on fox news and do not care
@Linda - I'm sure many in Oklahoma are thrilled it's a fairly mild summer so they have no reason to think it has anything to do with global warming.
They need to physically experience something negative in order to even realize that it's happening. It doesn't matter to them what is written or said.
It is truly unfortunate that so much of our time and attention has been riveted by the political angst in Washington and elsewhere.In any other time the news would be focusing on the terrible wildfires in California, the heat in the west and the heavy, flooding rains in the east.This is the biggest news because another election will not reverse climate change .For too long we have thought we had the luxury to debate the issue- hurricanes this fall may alert coastal cities that they are in danger as habitable areas.Climate will certainly become front row center as the weather becomes more costly and deadly.Puerto Rico was an early warning of deadly results from climate change.
14
I’m a Florida native, born and raised in Ft. Liquordale. We’re seeing high tides flood the streets near the ocean like never before.
Florida has had a GOP climate change denying governor, Rick “I’m not a scientist” Scott since 2011.
During his tenure in office he has taken steps to dramatically reduce environmental protection in the state including reducing $700 million for water management.
During his tenure red algae blooms from agricultural runoffs have choked the state’s waterways and coastline in a size and duration never previously experienced. Indeed there is a red tide right now on the Gulf coast killing record numbers of fish and other sea life and driving tourists away in droves.
Guv Scott is running for US Senate against moderate Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, an environmentalist and Fla Senator since 2001.
Despite Scott’s dreadful environmental record in a state with the most coastline in the nation vulnerable to rising seas, he is tied in polling with Sen Nelson.
Apparently at least half of the benighted electorate in Fla could care less about what climate change is doing to Mother Nature.
I don’t think Mother Nature being on the ballot will have any effect in 18 or 20 in Fla.
49
"Now that’s a platform worth running on, and it’s one that can do what Democrats need most: make them the party of strengthening the working class and American security."
That might be a platform worth running on, but God help the Democratic Party if they let Mr. Friedman compose any of their proposals:
"The Democratic message could start with some simple math...."
For most people there is no such thing as simple math and if you want to lose an election, throw numbers and figures at people that does not effect them personally and immediately.
"The Democratic strategy should be built around putting together the performance standards, research and carbon pricing"
Now that should grab the average voter. Research is a great vote getter.
The Republicans would probably pay to have Mr. Friedman write for the Democrats.
5
@Joshua Schwartz
I think personal stories help. Good long story journalism. Here is information from my middle age niece who has Lyme disease. I cry for her.
"I had a great year at work but during that time in Juneau I got a bull's-eye rash. I didn't get sick until August 2016. I started sleeping 20 hours a day and chronic unbearable pain all over my body. Plus my concentration and memory became impaired. Eventually I was diagnosed with Lyme. Often auto immune diseases initiate fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, which I have. The chronic fatigue is Bizzarre, I can sleep anywhere from 12 to 20 hours and even when I'm awake I'm extremely tired. . On top of that I have severe arthritis in my hands and knees and feet. I spent a lot of money trying to find out what was wrong. It looks like I now have chronic Lyme. I have been couch surfing with family and friends for sometime now. I had to give up my apartment last summer and I had no income for a year and a half. I now have been approved for a small state disability income monthly. I also am filing for disability company UNUM that I paid through my job. When our weather changes I have so much pain day and night and I can't sleep - cry and moan. I'm not fun to be around and have learned what it's like to be a shut in. It turned rainy yesterday and creates more pain. Soon they will take away my pain meds and then I'll just probably be bedridden.
How can you ignore this in your family?
1
I think the Democrats should just mow the Trumpets down about climate change and the resultant migration disasters. Fill the airwaves with FACTS. Emphasize the truth, truth, truth. Make celebrities of climate scientists. Mr. Friedman's columns on climate change, not to mention his books offer accessible
talking points. If only there were a Koch brother for climate control.
13
@hirenel Sorry, but facts don't matter. I recall an interview with a Trump supporter who was informed that Trump wastes $3.3 mill each weekend he flies to his golf course in FL. The supporter replied: "I can't believe that, I'm certain he's spending his own money to go play golf".
I rest my case.
18
We should not view climate change as just an election issue. The challenges it creates is at a very foundational level - from energy, to food and water.
Nature irrigates our agricultural miracles and provides the right temperatures to grow our crops; it provides fresh water through rain and stores it for later use as snow and ice; and so far has given us a dense compact energy source in fossil fuels.
We have innovated around natures bounty to build all our civilizations - from Egypt and Babylon to the Indus Valley and later the current modern civilization.
Within the next 50 years climate change will impact our agriculture profoundly and our surpluses will turn to deficits even in the US. Water shortages will be more acute especially during hot summers. And as oil becomes more scarce and expensive, our ability to move goods globally will be curtailed.
Not a pleasant scenario to contemplate - but highly likely even if we elect Al Gore type Presidents.
So we need to yes elect Al Gore look alikes but then work very hard to address all the major issues in an equitable manner.
3
Thomas. Thomas! Don't you know: what they say is happening isn't happening. It's fake news.
The other day they told me to get out of Lone Fir Campground in Washington State because a fire was coming. I said, "show me the fire! Not the NEWS about the fire!" The ranger pointed at the smoke in the sky and I just said, "that's not smoke from a forest fire. That's some guy's barbecue!"
6
I agree with everything you said but Trump and his minions in the GOP have other ideas, the November election is important but Democrats don't seem very enthusiastic about climate policy so I see no hope for the foreseeable future, corporations still govern the USA and that won't change anytime soon. It is very likely already too late to change the planets heating due to permafrost loss in the arctic and population growth. Will the oceans keep sequestering carbon forever, not likely!
3
There can be no effective response to global climate change without global collective action, with no free riding. The nation-state is too small a political unit to deal with it. Unless there is a world government with a dictator at its head, the human race is doomed. The great 20th century biologist and writer, J. B. S. Haldane once said that God's favorite creature is the beetle, because He made so many species. The beetle will survive homo sapiens.
2
Seems obvious. But Trump won't last to run against.
3
What if I’m just a brain in a vat, and all of what I consider to be reality has been created by some kind of evil demon?
If there’s ever a point at which concern for the future habitability of the planet isn’t on the ballot, then why even bother to have a ballot at all?
It has been rather counterproductive on the part of legislators to weaponize [mostly junk] science in the way that they have. Science is never the object, it is always the subject.
The very notion that any “settled science” exists should make people cringe. Science is used to negatively prove theories to be as close to perfect as possible. All of this is based on trial and error. We consider something to be true until we have evidence which overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.
Donald Trump, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, singularly.
And I really pity the Horse. Seriously.
14
Tom, it all comes down to the same problem: You can’t get enough people to pay attention to the problem. The Republicans will continue to deny any and all climate science, and the Democrats are so terrified of the realities that they will soft peddle the issue. The “four zeros” is great, but we need someone front and center who can “sell” it to America. For me, that person is Jerry Brown—and he will soon have the time to devote to the project.
2
Since several experts are now saying humans are projected to be extinct within a few years, I'm not too worried about Mother Nature's political aspirations; I expect her to win in any case.
15
@Fallopia Tuba
Then I have a very cheerful film for you: The World Without Us......, both the feature film and the two seasons the episodes ran. It doesn't say what happened, but it is easy enough to imagine.
Weather is worsening everywhere, but today’s conditions in the U.S. have had their counterparts in other decades, and people remember. When I first came to NYC back in the 1970s, we experienced some of the most extreme winters AND summers on record. Weather would need to become FAR more extreme in the brief time between today and 2020 for it to be a significant factor in that election.
Then, Trump issued a challenge when he took us out of the Paris Accords: that all nations should come together to negotiate DIFFERENT agreements that better shared the burden of mitigating the effects of global climate change among developed and emerging economies, and relied on actions not merely promises. Almost all the projected population growth of the next generation will come from emerging economies, not from developed societies, and population will become the major multiplier in carbon emissions.
Trump’s challenge has elicited practically no interest across the world. Yet developed nations today make immense sacrifices to reduce their carbon emissions, while developing nations desperate for cheap energy as they seek to build their middle classes rely almost exclusively on mere promises. There is a large contingent globally that recognizes that serious sacrifices need to be made, but are happy to see developed economies alone make them.
These are highly salable arguments. What if Mother Nature is on the ballot in 2020? I suggest that it won’t matter a small hill of beans.
2
@Richard Luettgen
Yup, Whether or not Mother Nature shows up in 2020 won't matter a hill of beans. I don't think she'll bother to show up. She's been yelling her head off for decades now and no one gave a hoot.
She's just doing her own thing now, pretty much like she always has. Lemmings are gathering for their march over the cliffs. More this year than ever before. Polar bears are eating garbage, making do. Humans are partying like there's no tomorrow. Good time for it.
You may have highly salable arguments with your fellow humans, here and around the world, but Mother Nature isn't buying any of it. Now what?
3
@Memi von Gaza
Since I posted that, it looks like Mother Nature cancelled dawn up here in Alberta. The morning sun which has been glowing like a red rubber ball for weeks now is missing in action. A dull orange gloom is all that remains. The birds are silent. It's a terrible beauty nonetheless. I've never experienced anything like it.
Just now I read of flash floods in your neck of the woods, a bride rescued through the sun roof of her car not yet swept away, holes in the earth swallowing torrents of grey water.
Stay safe. Enjoy the ride if you can. We've only just begun this chapter of the book we thought we were authoring.
Mr. Friedman,
Believe me I'm on your side but so many people(adults) are so entrenched in their anti-climate change beliefs we will never have them believing.
I believe our youth hold the key. Unfortunately many teachers in many states are not able or unwilling to to give the students the vital climate change information they need to begin a new grass roots revolution for change. Too many politicians in state legislatures are unwilling to make climate change a requirement in the curriculum for their state standards.
Shouldn't global warming be taught to all children grades k-12. This would not be brainwashing but real learning.
As a Social Studies teacher for 6th graders it has always been easy to incorporate climate change in many of my lessons.
Unfortunately this past year my principal told me some parents said I had a global warming agenda and I would have to let up. It is rather sad when the American students can't be taught what they should be taught.
Mr. Friedman in your next column I want you to write about how many of our state curriculum's are failing in the fight to stop climate change.
78
@Stefano.....an important statement--- "my principal told me some parents said I had a global warming agenda and I would have to let up. It is rather sad when the American students can't be taught what they should be taught."
That's extremism now mainstream.
Don't depend on Friedman. Your statement needs discussion on the media. You should send it now as a letter to the editor. And submit it as an op ed to the Times, or suggest they get someone to write an op ed with your point as the theme. It's part of the stifling of our political debate and the new respectability of science denial. You experienced it 1st hand.
You might also tell NYT columnist Bret Stephens whose 1st column supported the deniers of the scienctific consensus on climate change cause by humans. Yes, in the NYT.
1
Thank you for marshaling facts and statistics, Mr. Friedman. But do they matter in our current up-is-down media culture? I am pessimistic about Democratic candidates being smart enough to look past random poll numbers and state the obvious as you have so eloquently done. (I've given up on the Republicans.)
7
Polls of American voters always show that environmental concerns rank at the very bottom of their priorities. A large proportion still do not believe that the climate is changing, most of those that do think we can just merrily adapt, failing to understand that humanity depends on a functional planetary ecosystem. Even fewer are willing to make significant lifestyle changes to avert disaster. Although Europeans are a little better educated and more concerned, the developing world, which is increasing emissions exponentially, is even more oblivious than the US.
Neither this country nor the rest of the world will take meaningful action until people start dying by the millions.
13
It's going to be a tough sell to rural America. How many houses in rural America have solar panels on the roof? How many electric cars are sold in rural America? I don't think they're going to say "I'm voting for the democrat because the creek flooded Jeb's house." Maybe if Ford made an electric F-150. Maybe.
8
@Craig Willison, don't forget that the farmers and ranchers and fishers-- you, know, those voters in your homogeneous "rural America" feel the impacts of droughts, floods and fires everyday in visceral ways that urban American does not. Their lives and livelihoods are dependent on those good six inches of top soil and the right amount of rain. Many have long histories on the land and coasts going back generations stewarding the land and waters and will readily tell you that the climate conditions aren't the same as they used to be. Give them some credit, don't dismiss their voice, and give them a credible candidate to support that doesn't disparage their "ruralness" much less their intelligence.
26
@Craig Willison In other words it's going to be a tough selll among people who actually understand how a seed becomes a crop.
Coastal Elites don't understand that switching to organic agriculture would cause worldwide famine because yields would drop 30-40%. Jeb does.
Coastal elites also tend to lack engineering degrees, but it doesn't keep them from believing that alternative energy is viable even though current battery and grid technology says otherwise. They actually think slapping a solar panel on the roof solves the problem.
3
So you think this is the answer, Tom? Dream on!
The real problem is that there is far too many humans on this earth. Until the human race becomes capable of controlling its own population, things will only deteriorate. The earth is heading for some truly cataclysmic times and it is quite likely there is no way to avoid these cataclysmic times anymore. Maybe events in the future -- pandemics, floods, fires, wars (both conventional and nuclear), droughts, famines, etc. -- will limit the human population. But sadly we have not figured out on our own how to do that yet.
I am glad that I am a senior citizen at this point, because the future for earth does not look bright.
91
@Tom Krebsbach Agreed. That is the 800 pound gorilla in the room that nobody wants to talk about. We keep having far more children than the planet itself can support. I am also a senior citizen and like you, I am glad to not have to watch this.
@Tom Krebsbach We've figured out how to control human population growth, unfortunately we don't use the means at our disposal due to cultural/religious/ideological reasons.
Climate change is already part of our everyday lives, but it is still in the abstract, which is essentially out of sight and out of mind - exactly how republicans want.
The price of of everyday goods (especially food) is affected by climate change as there are droughts, floods, and fluctuating costs to transport to and from. (let alone crushing new republican taxes/tariffs)
What happens on the other side of the world (and on your tiny flickering screens) directly affects you. (in the ways from above and so much more)
A large portion of us only see, hear and feel within the limited radius of our everyday lives. We don't add up all of the little costs, but rather just look at the bottom line at the end of the month as to how much money is left in our bank accounts. Even then, as we scratch our head to figure it out, we then just shrug our shoulders and pay more. It may be not that much, but extrapolate it out to billions and the numbers become incomprehensible.
The numbers from above are even larger than the Trillion or two tax theft that republicans made off with for themselves, the rich and corporations - again in the abstract.
Too large a lumber in the context of a single vote.
11
How do we deal with the hot air from trump? We need to act in the mid-term elections to begin the long process to restore the earth.
17
Here in the middle South, we are having a pretty normal summer -- somewhat hot, but pretty wet. Farmers' crops are flourishing. This sure beats 2016, when dry conditions led to a lot of wildfires, especially in mountain areas. But my wife and I just got back from a trip to northern Europe, and conditions are really hot and dry there. And they don't have the air conditioning that the U.S. South takes for granted.
4
@Bearded One
We have our own ways of coping with the heat: opening all of the windows when it is cool and then keeping them closed them during the day, shades down; eating light meals, doing whatever we have to do slowly ... During that heat wave I did everything I always do, all except for my fitnerss and weight workouts.
Engineer reporting in!
This editorial is not hyperbole. It is not sensationalism. It is not opinion. It is reality. These are things we can do now.
For three years running, I've had a solar power system on my house, and to date, have consumed about 400 KWH cumulative more than sent back to the grid. It works. That's about $50 worth.
For three years, I have used an electric bicycle which is the most fun ever. I use it for many errands and shopping. Radius of travel is easily 10 miles, with greater than 20 miles between charges. A charge is about 10 cents of electricity. Cruising speed with light pedaling is just over 20 MPH. It works.
Now for the big stuff. We must build out a new high voltage distribution system to carry power from the windy and sunny areas to high population centers. This must happen.
We must build utility grade storage batteries. Flow batteries using inexpensive materials are under development and hold tremendous promise.
We must reconfigure utilities to be in the power storage and redistribution business instead of just the power generation business. Renewable energy is diffuse and must be consolidated and redistributed by the utility.
We must research new and more efficient ways to harness the power of the atom. The light water reactor design dates back to the 1950's.
All are doable, reachable and practical. All we need is leadership. That my friends is absent from Washington.
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@Bruce Rozenblit I like what you have to say. Except: We must solve the problem of perpetual toxic nuclear waste storage, monitoring, upkeep, and security Before we loose any more 'peaceful' atoms on future generations.
1
@Bruce Rozenblit I read Mr Friedman's article closely looking for any reference to nuclear power(NP). I also looked at every single comment and yours is the only one to reference NP. This is a problem, as most serious analysts(including James Hansen) who do the arithmetic always conclude that without NP we cannot achieve the carbon dioxide reductions necessary. Sure, you can run a house on solar(I do), but not large scale industrial processes. Ironically, Mr Trump does say he is for NP, and when I scour his ideas it is the only thing he and I agree on. It is time for the environmental lobby to make common cause with conservatives on NP .
As for JessiePearl's concern about waste. Yes it is an issue, but newer designs such molten salt reactors, have the potential to solve this problem with much shorter lived waste(see Terrestrial Energy)
@Bruce Rozenblit "We must reconfigure utilities to be in the power storage and redistribution business instead of just the power generation business. "
The electric water utility I recently retired from is doing just that.
The USGS did a fairly good job of reporting on the Kilaeua volcano eruption. Frightening as the aerial videos were their reporting of facts were calm not hysterical. If you went on YouTube you saw the USGS reports and updates but if you got waylaid by other conspiracy videos that were saying the rifts were going to explode and cause a large chunk of the island to drop into the sea causing a thousand foot tidal wave. Technically possible but really not probably. Same with the caldera under Yosemite. Every venting Geyser is a the prelude to a super volcano of apocalyptic proportions. Possible but not probable.
On the NOAA site they want you to understand methane. Methane is trapped the permafrost and its much more absorbent than co 2 Once global warming melts the permafrost the end. No proof but a lot of speculation.
When science is so dire is it science or fiction. No way is it being responsible. Every year they keep upping the ante trying to propel people into hysterics and the message is only the left can save them.
If Mother Nature is on the 2020 ballot I can already see the lunacy we will be subjected to from the right:
* This just another way to raise my taxes!
* It was cold today so that proves global warming ain't real!
* Scientists in the 1970s predicted a coming Ice Age and that did not happen. So they don't know what they are talking about! (Conveniently ignoring how far science has advanced since the 70s)
*This is all just a Chinese hoax!
*This is a nefarious U.N. one world government Marxist Leninist scheme to take away my guns and lock me away in a Walmart concentration camp!
*The Bible don't say nothing about climate change so it can't be real!
*The fires in California and floods in Japan are being carried out by crisis actors!
And I am sure I missed a few. You truly cannot reason with insanity.
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@Patrick
It's just that when you've been blaming every bad weather event for the last 20 years on climate change and then say this year we know for sure this time around it is you don't sound to convincing.
@Patrick-Fox (Un)News and alt-right talking points brought to you by Koch Brothers and their proxies, big oil, and A.L.E.C., etc.
3
@Patrick You forgot "The press is the enemy of the people!"
3
Trump will just blame California water policy and the climate science deep state, and Fox News and its viewers will follow blindly along. Sad!
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Fox says there is no climate change, or none that we can change. Fox insists that no president gets to close down the coal industry, like Obama did, etc. Rupert Murdoch will die before the weather becomes a problem that he can’t personally avoid. No one around him says “no” to him anymore than the paid swamp that liar Trump surrounds himself with.
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If Mother Nature actually ran for office of President of the USA I would vote for her in a second, even though I knew the republican congress would fight all the way kicking and screaming in denial of the obvious. The environment should be a more important issue than it is but the conservatives propagandize the "loss of jobs" cleaner air and safer drinking water would cost.
The E.P.A. under Trump is a farce. No protection just abuse.
Siera Club member since 1991.
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@USMC1954
I just got it! Mother Nature is a WOMAN so nothing's going to happen if the GOP stays in (fossil fuel) power.
@USMC1954
Dems have to stress the creation of NEW jobs and possibly a universal basic income for those who will be displaced.
Things will have to get pretty bad in the next two years for Republicans to eat crow and say, you know what, all you liberals were right, humans are warming the earth, let's all work together to prevent catastrophe.
We already know that the debate about AGW will not be won or lost based on logic or science; we've tried that for many years and people who do not believe are just as entrenched as 20 years ago. The only thing left is when people's lives are affected in ways that are so profound that they are forced to try something new. But by then it will likely be too late. Meanwhile, it still is a liberal (or Chinese) hoax.
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Mr. Friedman, Mother Nature will be on the 2020 presidential election ballot and in the 2018 Midterms. American citizens, especially those of Puerto Rican descent, will never forget his blasé and insensitive paper-tossing response to people who lost everything to Hurricane Maria. And his recent gaffe about the California wildfires shows just how ignorant he is about climate change.
Mother Nature aside, the tornado that is this administration will be enough to get voters who have had enough with dark clouds and daily storm warnings to look for new leadership in the upcoming Midterms. If voters in the Midwest really want clean fuel and energy efficiency they can get rid of the foul air, smog and daily pollution brought on by this president and his party.
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Nice work getting the first Pick! I too like to think that climate and natural disasters are something that would unite humans, since we are all vulnerable. And destructive weather sure is an apt metaphor for the Trump administration...
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@silver vibes-folks living in Houston and Florida should also not forget, because they live in the path for more flooding brought by more super hurricanes. Ditto the east coast states experiencing flooding now. And here on the West Coast, we're subject to massive fires. These will become standard fixtures and under Republican leadership that has results in a mass giveaway (aka tax overhaul) to the rich and corporations--there will be fewer resources to combat these perennial challenges.
3
As with most of Friedman's ideas this is a bad one & would be political suicide for the Democrats. Cap & trade, carbon taxes etc are politically dead in the water. Voters don't want to pay more for energy. End of story. Our country isn't moving in this direction.The point of cap and trade is to increase the price of energy. Cap & trade is designed to increase the price of 85 percent of the energy we use in America. That is the goal. For it to “work,” cap and trade needs to increase the price of oil, coal, and natural gas to force consumers to use more expensive forms of energy. President Obama’s former OMB director, Peter Orszag, told Congress that “price increases would be essential to the success of a cap and trade program. The majority of U.S. voters will never go for this. If Democrats start pushing this it will blow up in their face & translate into more defeats in 2018 & 2020. Cap-and-trade is political Kryptonite for Democrats. We have been here before. Cap and trade was a big reason the Dems lost the House in 2010. Look at where the Republican pickups came 19 Seats from the “Rust Belt” from Pennsylvania along the Great Lakes to Wisconsin. The overall reality in that climate change legislation is hard to pass even in good times. It's really a killer in an economic downturn where citizens & business fear higher costs, even slightly higher costs, & may see no concrete benefits. Politicians need to find a better solution. Jobs, Health, Education is the answer. Not this.
2
Democrats have been running on Climate Change. They keep losing.
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Talking about climate change as an issue in the 2020 election is tantamount to arguing about the deck chairs on the Titanic. Oh, to be sure, Mr. Friedman's summary of the science is sound. And any thinking person understands the seriousness of climate change to our children's and our grandchildren's way of life, if present trends continue.
But what makes him believe that there will be a presidential election in 2020? Every step Trump has taken so far tells me that he is solidifying his base, destroying the press, and consolidating his power. A majority of Republican voters have already told him they would support him if he cancelled the election. He has dispatched every senior FBI official from Comey on down, since he took office. And he will not stop there.
The fact is that at best, the Democrats will retake the House in 2018 (assuming there is an election in three months). They will not retake the Senate. Trump is safe from both subpoena power and indictment, thanks to the five solid votes he now has on the Supreme Court. There will be no impeachment and removal of office for Trump. He will have the wind at his back in 2019.
Trump understands that he is only limited by the laws of physics and his imagination. Climate change? Years from now we will look back on columns like these during the Trump "presidency" and shake our heads at how breathtakingly naive we were. We might be at the point of no return with climate change, but we are well past that point with Trump.
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@Henry Hurt
Are you really certain about those five votes on the Supreme Court? There might in due course be five Justices who are conservative but remember several of those have been on the Court since long before the extremism of Trump took hold. Their true loyalty might be to the Constitution, not necessarily the Republican party or Trump. Have you never wondered why Jeff Sessions is still Attorney General? His loyalty is to the Constitution, at least his view of the Constitution and it is not to Trump.
@Henry Hurt
If this administration weren't so incompetent, we'd be there already.
Climate change is a hoax.
Rejoice boys asbestos is back,
Coming from Russia by the sack,
Get ready, start coughin’,
Lung Cancer? Not often,
Mesothelioma won’t lack.
Mercury-food levels will rise,
For some t’will affect brain and eyes,
CO2 emission,
Some nuclear fission?
That would be a dandy surprise.
There are EPAers complain
Thinking their work’s all been in vain,
But profits will fatten
So your hatches batten’
You’re living under the Trump reign.
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@Larry Eisenberg
Well said!
Why can't YOU be president
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My sentiments exactly. How I would love to see Tom Friedman guide our battered, bewildered country out of this hell and into a future that allows me to feel hope; and to feel pride in being an American again. I am so ashamed of our self inflicted suicide on the installment plan. Each day under the current administration is yet one more little death. My years are running out, but oh how I fear for my children and my countrymen.
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Persistent wage stagnation because of an obscenely lopsided wealth distribution and the clout that comes with it, means that even if Mr. Friedman's program does foster a slew of new jobs, they will still pay a pittance of what they're worth to the employer. Is there some reason the Democrats can't make this point also on the stump, or is that too Trotskyite for your Third Way tastes?
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I am visiting pacific northwest and the smoke from the nearby fires has engulfed Seattle and surroundings. The mountains are hidden in ash grey clouds and every body I know is waking up with phlegm coating the throat, as if at a cellular level, the body is trying to fight the dust particles and coating the airway. Seattle was NOT like this in August. Seattle will NEVER be the same with the global warming. I completely and wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Friedman. Climate change IS the jugular that politicians should go for.
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@vs
Welcome to today. They say that our fire season in California is year round. That means California is burning year round. The fire is never going out. It's only going to get worse. I think we've gone beyond the tipping point and we're headed into accelerated heating. I'm just glad I didn't reproduce.
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@vs
for days ash from the Cranston fire, which was arson, in Southern California came in through the windows, turned the sky brown and filled the air with thick haze. That fire is out now. They caught the guy, who had set multiple fires. I hope he spends the rest of his life in jail. To set a fire in this fragile world is tantamount to attempted murder.
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@vs Same goes for my home state of Montana. We are choking with smoke from OR, WA, ID, and Canada plus the fires in western MT. I have lived here for 75 years and have never experienced smoke as bad as we have had this past decade.
Wind, solar, advanced nuclear, and contraception could be the salvation for planet earth. Remember, there is no "Planet B."
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Trump would still win the electoral college. Mother Nation would rent a huge hanger but all the animals would stay home and cry.
When the rest of the world industrializes but does not adopt "green" practices and lifestyles, what will you do then to mitigate global warming?
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@Zu367 The rest of the world except a couple are agree on the Paris Accord. For they know - and yes, even China - their ambition wouldn't have a prayer if their peoples ended up sick and unhealthy because of pollution.
Rhetorically, so why did America choose to withdraw from the Accord?!
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Mr. Friedman,
Nature doesn't figure in the voting decisions of a majority of Americans (per figures in the TImes). How many Americans are even willing to read your column, with its facts and figures, and consider your arguments as possibly worth investigating?
Sorry to be a wet blanket, Mr. Friedman, especially as California burns down around me, but I fear that your (well-written and -meant) arguments won't move enough people.
I sure hope I'm wrong. And we've gotta try anyway, right?
Harriet in San Francisco
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Mother Nature is always on the ballot. And until we recognize that and vote accordingly, the odds rise that Mother Earth will eventually shake off our highly invasive, short-sighted species...
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Oh, if only.... I know here in California it would be a winner in 2020. For that matter, as we have burning eyes, as we wheeze, as we cough, as we pray for our neighbors in the north, south, east and west of our state whose homes have been destroyed, and lives have been lost, it would be a no-brainer even in 2018. But, Mr. Friedman, if we have learned anything these past few years it is that people are not thinking of the future, whether it be global warming, health care, and/or education, to name but a few issues. Close to half of our population is deliberately ignorant and choose to be led by emotions. Unfortunately, those emotions are often rooted in hate toward those who are not like them.
No, I fear "global warming" will neither be on the ballot in 2020 nor 2018. But you know who will be on those ballots. Each one has "D" after his/her name. And I can guarantee you that if we can get those folks in Congress AND the White House, they, with our support, will work tirelessly to assuage Mother Nature's new reality.
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We are going through a period where there is no leadership at the national level. I mean none! We have too many players tearing their opponents apart and too many potential leaders afraid of being torn apart. ALL of our problems, but especially climate change, require personal changes. Tonight I refrained from driving three miles to get something at the store as I did not want to waste gas or put out CO2 when I could combine the trip another time, but how many of us think that way. Waste has become a necessity, whether it is overspending on the military or disposing of plastics inappropriately. We need a lot more than a slogan for the Democrats to avoid this downward spiral.
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The Democrats should talk about a broad-based energy tax to generate the funds for the largest public works program ever to adapt and fortify the US for the coming 2 degree F temperature increase coming over the next two decades on top of what appears to be a 2 degree F increase that has already occurred. An overall 4 degree F increase from pre-industrial times to sometime in the 2030s is baked in.
To adapt you have to tax. No adaptation, no future.
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Not enough. It is impossible to live a "normal" American life style and not degrade the environment. I know the nicest liberal people, now in their sixties and seventies, well educated, worked hard, have more savings than they ever imagined back in the '60s when we were all young. What do we do with those bucks earned over a lifetime. Well, we all travel, mostly be air and auto when we get where the plane lets us off. And many of us have purchased second homes. Many of these second homes are "environmentally sound" and "burn less energy." But no one thinks about the upstream cost of extracting from the earth and transporting the building blocks of these second homes to the construction sites. We all host multiple CPUs in various guises in our homes. These devices do not burn much energy, say we. Yet, the upstream costs of the extraction, manufacture, and transportation of our vital CPUs is never figured. With a few minutes reflection we can all identify elements in our individual American lifestyles that cost the environment dearly. Next time you read about a major environmental conference, reflect on this. Did the delegates fly, did they sleep in climate controlled rooms, did they eat and drink well? No American can be an environmentalist.
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@William Colgan
That is why we need policies that change the impact of our behavior on a large scale. If we depend on people cutting back, nothing will ever change. But if the country (and other countries) put in place strong fuel economy standards, invest in renewables, encourage innovation (e.g lightbulbs, anyone?) the public will adapt. it's very difficult and expensive to individually reduce your carbon footprint if the infrastructure isn't there to support it.
13
I think this will be the time to reflect on all that has happened in the United States since the beginning of the American Revolution.
In Detroit, Michigan in 1973 I went to see the 1973 movie "Lost Horizon" at a movie theater. I was 19. I voted for President Richard Nixon' second term the year before at 18 in 1972 in Detroit. The movie was an escape of war in China. At that time it was the Vietnam War. Now it's climate change or global warming.
It would be nice to have had Vice President Al Gore elected President in 2000. I voted for him. Why couldn't he have won like Richard Nixon when I voted for him? Seeing the outcome today with President Donald J. Trump as President. And Hilary Clinton who I voted for I thought would be the next U.S. President. A Woman. Maybe Mother Nature herself. Or like the Statue of Liberty.
In the 1973 movie "Lost Horizon" a group of Europeans crash in the Himalayas where they are rescued and taken to the mysterious Valley of the Blue Moon, Shangri-La. It's not too far fetched that there may be a place in our solar system like that. I was hoping it would be Earth. But Mother Nature must have other plans. And maybe it will be the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Who knows for sure? Only Mother Nature.
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Climate change is unlikely to be a major factor in 2018 or 2020 elections. Only those who are already disgusted by the Trump administration consider the environment an important issue. Greater evidence of the worsening impact of climate change will get a few more people to the polls. Perhaps more young people than usual because climate change will affect them more.
Like all American elections, the economy will be the primary issue and that’s not good news for Democrats because most Trump voters don’t have a clue what long term damage is being done to the economy by the tax law and the President’s trade wars.
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Sorry Thomas, you left out an important fact or reality check. Of course we need to fight climate change, encourage renewable energy, recycle and replenish the planet. But you forgot to mention, how can the Trump family will profit from this? If you can include that variable in the equation then the current Administration my back your proposals.
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Since most Christians believe God didn't create a world that wasn't designed to accommodate a little CO2 from increasing populations of people, livestock, etc....your narrative will fall on deaf ears.
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@Zu367
Many Christians think God sends us messages, using earthquakes to smite the ungodly or AIDS to smite the gays or whatever. God is sending us a message that we are trashing the world He gave us and He is sick of it. Since we are ignoring this message, He is sending it again, louder, and eventually the volume will be deadly.
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What if 2020 is too late? Folks, 2018 is the time you put your foot down.
No more dithering. Black folks who chose to stay home in 2016 now have an alleged N word president.
If you think things can't get any worse, they will
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@Bos So though very probably we are already past the tipping point on global warming, the policis and actions Tom Friedman recommends might slow things down somewhat and encourage other economies worldwide to put on the brakes.
13