Why Climate Change Is a Civilizational Emergency

We’re Entering a New Phase of Climate Change — And What We’re Doing Isn’t Enough

Image Credit: World Meteorological Organisation

They’re calling it the first global heatwave. In China, the temperature reached 52.2ºC (126ºF), shattering records. In Arizona, it was 47ºC (116ºF). In California, 128ºF (53.33ºC). In the Persian Gulf, 66ºC (150ºF). Meanwhile, floods roared across the globe, from the Northeast United States, to India, to Korea. Canada’s still burning — and Europe, roasting, is sure to see megafires soon, too.

This was the summer climate change got real, got scary, and it happened faster than anyone much believed possible. I’ve know I’ve been saying that for a few days now, and today I want to tie up a few of the discussions we’ve been having.

This is our first Extinction Summer. There have been tastes of it, before. Australia’s Black Summer — black as in “incineration.” Pakistan’s mega-monsoon, which flooded a third of the country. Canada and Europe’s megafires, growing worse by the year. But this was the first year that the world suddenly felt like…it was on fire.

What do you take away from all this? Many are expressing a sense of shock. They’re startled. How could this happen so suddenly, so fast — everywhere, all at once? Some are still clinging steadfastly to denial — let them, their very identities are wrapped up in supremacy, in trying to prove they’re superior to…the planet. Good luck with that. And some are bewildered. Is this really happening?

What we’ve learned this summer is something crucial. Who was right? You see, in every issue, our society’s devolved into a predictable pattern. On one side are those who reject facts and evidence and logic, on the other are those who embrace it. And in the middle are those — often in power — who set a false equivalence between the two.

I bring all that up for a reason. 

This summer, we learned that the “alarmists” were right. The activists and scientists and change-makers who’ve been trying to sound the…alarm. Who’ve issued dire warnings and scary predictions. What happened over the years? How did we get here? Those warnings and predictions were dismissed, ignored, marginalized, and trivialized. Entire industries sprang up to do so, and you’ll earn a far more handsome living as someone who’ll still tell you, this summer, while the world is burning, that it’s not…than anyone, really, who warned it would.

If anything, the “alarmists” understated the threat. And they probably did that to try and get at least some of their message through. All this? These are the mega-scale impacts of climate change. Canada’s fires stretch the breadth of a continent. So does America’s heat dome. This heatwave rings…the planet. These forms of impacts weren’t supposed to arrive for decades — around 2050 or so, models and forecasts once said. They’re here now. That doesn’t make the alarmists wrong, it makes them righter than they knew. And the rest of us? We should all be learning.

From this Extinction Summer. About the future. Most sane and thoughtful people are looking around the globe now with a sense of sudden horror. It’s really happening….right now…this fast? My God. Now what? Now we learn something. What, precisely, though?

There are three things that any sane person should understand right now about our civilization, its climate, and its political economy.