How bad are America's climate prospects this morning?

Climate change is accelerating. And here in America efforts against climate change will soon be decelerating.

Concerned Americans need to start acting differently.

Yes. A few of the many recent headlines:

The earth has been exceptionally warm of late, with every month from June 2023 until this past September breaking records. It has been considerably hotter even than climate scientists expected. [Zeke Hausfather, research scientist at Berkeley Earth.]

More of the world’s glaciers are likely retreating far faster than predicted, possibly decades ahead of a grim climatological schedule. [Paleoclimatologist Jeremy Shakun]

Countries promised to move away from coal, oil and natural gas at last year’s climate summit. New research shows they’re burning more than ever before. [Brad Plumer, New York Times]

Here in America

Climate change is parching the American West even without rainfall deficits. Higher temperatures are increasing evaporation enough to cause drought. [Holly Ober, UCLA Newsroom]

Millions of people are affected by so-called sunny day flooding each year. On average, the U.S. now experiences five extra days of high-tide flooding each year compared to the year 2000. [NOAA report]

The prevalence and the power of the most extreme wildfires are growing. A new report finds that extreme wildfires appear to have doubled in the past 20 years, both in frequency and magnitude. [CBS News]

We’ve just elected an American government led by one who calls climate change a “hoax” and says “nuclear warming . . . is the biggest problem we have in the whole world.”

Years of efforts by environmentalists to educate and persuade Americans about the dangers they face from climate change have failed. Earlier this year, only 12% of Republican voters thought climate was a top priority for the President and
Congress. ( 59% of Democratic voters did.) Republican support for fighting climate change may decline even further because they feel their beliefs were justified by the election results.

Trump’s platform and the Republicans’ Project2025 call for hamstringing all big federal efforts to slow emissions or build protections from climate damage.

Yes, American efforts to slow and protect against climate change are about to fall away rapidly.

It is not possible to overstate the dangers to Americans’ health, personal prosperity, and our grandchildren’s wellbeing. Can we sensitize and educate our fellow Americans, red or blue? Can we help them see the pain and costs that are heading their way? Can we help them influence policymakers? I think so — but it will take a sea change in our efforts and methods.

Lots and lots of citizens need to become climate activists, and climate activists need to start shouting a lot louder – even louder to be heard over the federal messaging that will soon start poo-pooing these dangers.

The federal government? The MAGA plans include quickly dismantling the federal Department of Education, largely because it has supported children learning about the bad things in America – like slavery and now climate change. [ABCNews]

The states? Many state governments are no better. Florida has instructed textbook suppliers to remove references to climate change if they want to sell their books to the state’s schools. [Tampa Bay Times]

A much bigger push from society? For a stronger climate education and persuasion movement to develop, we need to quickly discard some big misperceptions we have of the present.

We picture the Trump opposition to climate protections, based on his last term, as mostly bluster with weak or failed initiatives. Very soon that image will be wrong.
We picture a climate action movement led by a handful of national organizations like the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund to whom we send a few dollars every so often. The current budgets, staffing and goals of these organizations are pitiful compared to the challenge.
We picture Washington – its regulatory agencies, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act – as America’s biggest engine for cutting emissions and protecting against dangers. (I’ve repeatedly said there’s no engine of safety anywhere near as powerful as our national government.) That is about to change dramatically, as key environmental agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, NOAA, and the Department of Energy are hamstrung or eliminated. Congress too can weaken environmental laws already enacted, and Trump is claiming he can refuse to enforce those laws anyway.
We think the adverse effects of climate change might cost the average American family a thousand dollars or two annually as they develop. Economists think much much more:

The projected cost of climate change to an American born in 2024 is around $500,000 over their lifetime. Climate disasters alone could wipe out 10% of U.S. GDP every year by 2050. By the end of the century, climate-related weather disasters could cost the U.S. $500 billion every year. [Consumers Union]

Here’s an imagination challenge. If we close our eyes we can picture America two years from now.

By 2026 the Administration and Congress have learned to be effective opponents of reducing emissions and building climate protections. We’ll continue to fight them, but it gets harder.
By 2026 donations to nonprofits working to strengthen human justice and climate protections have suddenly risen five-fold. From foundations’ big gifts to individuals’ mail-in contributions, Americans have quickly come to see nonprofit donations as far more productive on climate and justice issues than federal income taxes.
By that time national environmental and climate nonprofits have dramatically expanded. They are filing many times the number of lawsuits they have in the past, lobbying Congress and state legislatures, researching climate technologies, and spawning hundreds of local groups. Thanks to an army of trainers and a cornucopia of materials, these groups are operating successful community education programs, twisting arms in statehouse and local council meetings, actually building community projects for heat, flooding, drought, and other dangers, and organizing passive resistance.
By then resistance to local taxes and levies has dropped as we’ve seen these payments actually produce the community climate-proofing projects which the federal government has walked away from.
in 2026 climate groups and their activities are identified with words like ‘safety’, ‘prosperity’, and ‘economic’ — not ‘climate’ or ‘environment’. Measures are in dollars, not degrees Fahrenheit.
By that time, state capitals have quickly become the strongest government support for climate defenses. Hey, one of the primary ways Project2025 wants to dispose of federal programs is by shouting States Rights and offloading them to the states.
And certainly within two years, increasing sectors of the business world have learned there’s plenty of money to be made in sustainable products and services. They’re pushing hard on Congress for laws and regulations, programs, subsidies, and investments that grow that market.

A whole lot of rights and freedoms are threatened by the incoming administration and Congress, and many of us will want to put effort into those threats. We will likely want to support fairness for immigrants, choice for pregnant women, better education for our kids, freedom for LGBTQ+ persons, care for Ukrainians and Palestinians, and improved gun safety, to name a few. I and my family will be active in several of these issues.

Yes, all are important. But when it comes to urgency, Americans should understand that climate change is different. With the exception of immigrant deportation, it is more time-sensitive than most of the other consequences of the election we may want to tackle. Global warming is accelerating and, as we pass tipping points, it can quickly become more damaging and costly, working against many other societal issues.

Want to hear more about the threats and opportunities I describe above and the work and attitudes we will need to counter them? Read my fellow Substack writer, Robert Reich’s excellent What Will You Do? newsletter.

Reich concludes

In sum, my friends, we are facing a catastrophe far worse than what occurred in Trump’s first term of office. The meager guardrails that existed then will be gone. We must not avert our eyes from this calamity, or minimize it, or throw up our hands in despair or retreat. We must prepare to fight it. [Robert Reich]

How bad are America’s climate prospects this morning?