To our knees

Recently, Donald Trump drew ire (and some praise) for the comments he made on Twitter about the recent polar vortex and deep freeze that has ground to a halt a large swath of the United States: “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bull**** has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice”. Let’s ignore for a minute that single events do not prove long-term trends, that much of Southern Hemisphere (where it’s currently summer) is having record heat waves, that most climate models predict occasional massive freezes as a side effect of climate change, and that 97% of top scientists believe that humans are the primary cause of the warming trends of the past 150 years. No matter the cause, the effect is indisputable: the earth’s climate is changing (mostly warming) dramatically, and at a rate not seen in millions of years.

While I strongly agree with scientists about the causes of climate change, I’ve always found the "man-made” vs “natural” argument to be a bit of a straw man, in that it detracts from the reality of the situation we’re facing: that, despite all of our technological advancement, despite all of the “progress” we’ve made as a species, despite many of our inherent feelings of superiority over the natural world, we are still utterly and hopelessly dependent on our planet to provide us what we need to thrive. In our globally connected and high-tech world, this has never been more apparent as during disasters like Eyjafjallajökull, Hurricane Sandy, and our current deep freeze. Schools, businesses, airports, roads, power grids, hospitals - all vital to our economy and way of life, and all utterly dependent on cooperation from Mother Nature to operate effectively, if at all.

At the end of the day any argument to ignore climate change doesn’t pass liberal or conservative muster, as these two facts are completely indisputable 1) Earth, as a whole, is getting warmer faster than at any other time in recorded human history, and 2) global CO2 levels, which correlate very strongly with global temperature and sea level, are by far the highest they’ve been in recorded human history. And all modern climate models predict roughly the same thing as a result of these changes: increased drought (especially in the tropics), stronger storms, and sea level rise. Now whether these changes will be catastrophic or just moderately debilitating is a matter of debate and hinges largely on whether the changes are natural or man-made. However, that half of all Americans live in or near a coastal town is not debatable, and even relatively mild (<2 ft) sea level increases are estimated to result in hundreds of billions in costs that taxpayers will be almost certainly be forced to assume (a distinctly nonconservative political/economic reality). Also not debatable is the fact that freshwater access is becoming increasingly scarce across the world, a reality that is almost certain to worsen as the planet warms and our population grows. We’ve all seen how savagely people will steal/fight/murder for oil - I shudder to see what they’ll do for water.

Ultimately I believe that we should all view global climate change as one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century and that we should demand that our leaders do everything they can to prevent it. Because no matter the cause, it’s going to have severe and often unpredictable consequences for the way we live our lives. And if there’s anything that this most recent disaster has shown us, it’s that we’re completely unprepared for it.