Climate Change Is the Next Pandemic!

As we write this, we are preparing, yet again, to be evacuated from another fast moving wildfire. So how do you shelter in place and evacuate at the same time?

The question really puts everything into perspective. Yes, there are big challenges facing our businesses, our health, our democracy, our rights, and our environment. But the environmental threats take top priority because they are immediate existential threats!

Priorities

And that’s what we have lost sight of: Priorities. How can we continue to mine and burn fossil fuels when the effects on the environment are so life threatening? The damage created by the fossil fuels we have already mined and burned have warmed the oceans to a point of devastation. Sea level rise, rain bombs, hurricane force winds and floods are ripping up the country.

Where we live, the warmer oceans have spawned hurricanes and tropical depressions in the Pacific off the coast of Baja California that are driving new thunderstorms and monsoon conditions up the coast in California – in the summer! One of these recent events resulted in huge electrical storms over a 2-day period that touched off numerous wildfires in areas already parched by multiple days of 100-degree plus weather.

The fires are growing so fast and there are so many, the firefighters are focusing on protecting inhabited areas which means the fires will burn until it rains or they burn out. Both are ominous propositions considering the dry months ahead. The wildfires are burning our wilderness areas, and they are burning out of control.

Existential Threat

Meanwhile, we watch helplessly as climate is not mentioned by one national party and is (apparently) a low priority by the other. As folks who have been evacuated multiple times, inhaled too much smoke, repopulated, then sheltered in place and now facing evacuation again, we have been affected by climate change for the past 4 years in a row. We can tell you this: it should be our top priority. Because, if we are fortunate enough to fix everything else and don’t fix the climate, we won’t be around to enjoy the other fixes.

All over the world, people are being more affected by climate change driven catastrophes.  These disasters are not stopping or slowing down because we have taken our eye off the ball, the BIG ball, the PLANET! They are getting worse!

The Full Price

Last week we wrote a post, “It’s Past Time for a Green Economy” . We probably should have called it, “It’s Past Time for a Green Economy.”  We hope that the climate change events of this summer make the Green Economy not merely a priority but an existential requirement!

Why should business, citizens, and our children have to shoulder the economic burden for the fossil fuels that continue to be extracted and burned? Shouldn’t the extractors have to pay the full price of burning those fuels? And shouldn’t those fees pay for the damage and subsidize the new Green Economy?