While the Hillary and Bernie mudslinging goes on, important stories are getting very little coverage, stories that are just as critical to the future of our country and our world as to which candidate is acting worse than the other. For example, out West, climate change, drought and wind are creating a rash of large, out of control wildfires:
More than 100 wildfires are burning across the West — destroying dozens of homes, forcing hundreds of people to flee and stretching firefighting budgets to the breaking point.
In Washington state, a fire was moving so quickly that authorities weren’t sure how many homes were lost, but they feared it was roughly 75.
Firefighters face a triple threat of extreme heat, severe drought conditions and gusty winds. And they’re doing it with dwindling resources: The U.S. Forest Service is spending $100 million a week on the fires, and next week it will burn through its annual budget.
On Sunday, fires forced evacuations in Oregon and California, left thousands without power in Washington and enveloped the San Francisco Bay Area in a thick gray haze.
All you Bernie and Hillary supporters, please take a minute to stop the back and forth trolling long enough to pay attention to a issue that is of major importance.
Because our next president must be the Climate Change President.
Our rapidly changing climate with extreme weather event after extreme weather event already poses a real and present danger to our national security. If we hope to have a sustainable society – hell, a sustainable civilization – action, immediate action is absolutely necessary, and our Presidential candidate better not only recognize that fact, but get out in front and lead on this issue, and they better get elected, too. This crisis is accelerating, but no one is making it a priority. Our next president needs to have a plan ready to go from day one not openly to raise awareness, but to get a kicking and screaming Congress to take action. Because the world’s environment isn’t going to fix itself. Global warming and its horrific consequences for humanity is going to worsen and worsen as quickly as the wildfires out West are burning across a veritable tinderbox dried, dead vegetation, releasing immense amounts of soot and carbon into the atmosphere and speeding up the process whereby we burn up the only planet are species can live on.
California is having a very bad year, ecologically speaking. With 92 percent of the state in severe drought and wildfires raging from the Oregon border to the Mexican border, California can’t seem to catch a break. Now comes new research from the University of California, Davis, that suggests the wildfires may be accelerating the process of climate change, moving the state faster into the future.
“Our goal was to describe how forest thinning and fire are affecting the plant diversity underneath California’s conifer forests,” Jens Stevens, the lead author of the paper, which was published in the Journal of Ecology, wrote in an email. “In other words, how many species do we have, and what kind of species are they?” Stevens measured a new process, recently named and not particularly thoroughly studied, called thermophilization.[…]
Stevens’ work is not in the agricultural field and doesn’t directly comment on agriculture, but it’s not hard to draw a parallel between what’s happening in the natural world and what could happen in agriculture. In 2012, researchers at CGIAR took a look at the production of the world’s biggest cereal crops, among them wheat, rice, and corn, and found that many developing countries will find that their ability to grow them will decrease in the wake of climate change. One particularly interesting prediction is that potatoes, which rely on cool temperatures and especially thrive at high altitudes, will prove tricky to grow. CGIAR predicted that bananas, or plantains, could end up replacing potatoes at these altitudes.
So, can we stop with the grade school behavior and the “gotcha” political gamesmanship long enough to ask our candidates and their supporters to focus on this issue of Global Warming/Climate Change/MassExtinction (or whatever term you want to use) and have them tell us what they plan to do as President to address a crisis that has, to all effects and purposes, begun to spin out of control?
Wildfires are raging across multiple Western states amid the latest scientific warnings about climate change. Montana declared a state of emergency over the fires, which also burned across Idaho, Oregon, California and Washington state. NASA has confirmed last month was the hottest July on record. Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says warmer ocean temperatures could make this year’s El Niño the strongest ever recorded.
Because we damn well better, my friends, we damn well better.
And Hillary and Bernie and all their raving supporters better, too.
