News from a Changing Planet -- #18
In early September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that this past summer, from June to August, was the hottest summer on record. The seven warmest years since reliable record-keeping began have occurred in the last seven years; 19 of the 20 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000.
But what NOAA also said was that this past summer was the hottest summer in many states since “The Dust Bowl,” which was identified as the summer of 1936. This summer, the average temperature was 74 degrees in the contiguous United States, less than one one-hundredth of a degree hotter than that summer of 1936.
Close observers of climate history and Dust-Bowl-Trivia-Heads™ may be puzzled by this particular characterization, knowing, as we do, that the Dust Bowl was the result of more than one hot summer. Not only did the phenomenon we know as the Dust Bowl come after several record hot and dry summers throughout the 1930s, it was also the result of great ecological and agricultural upheavals in the Midwestern United States.
Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma, by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration
During the early decades of the 20th century, especially during the First World War, mechanization and increased demand incentivized American farmers to plow up the prairies, replacing the native ecosystem -- mainly long grasses and wetlands -- with amber waves of grain and all that, or as they might also be known, monocultures, predominantly wheat and corn and now soybeans.
(If you are interested in learning more about why the markets rewarded this kind of agriculture and how the system got to be entrenched, I highly recommend Nature’s Metropolis, by William Cronon, a seminal work of environmental history, which will help you understand the agricultural and industrial development of the United States through the lens of the rise of Chicago!)
By the early 1930s, these developments had combined to create an ecological crisis in the middle of an economic one. The lack of rainfall and historic heat dried up the soil, which had already been made less stable by the repeated plowing (of the initial plants, and because annual crops like corn and wheat need to be plowed and replanted every year) and thereby stripped of many of its nutrients. Then the winds came, and blew away the now-unstable topsoil, darkening the skies from Oklahoma to Washington, D.C. (symbolic!), but also, every Eastern metropolis that had come to depend on the cheap grains from the nation’s breadbasket, which most people probably assumed would be endlessly abundant.
In his incredible book, “The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in American History,” historian Greg Grandin explained that the New Deal was one answer to what might happen when the frontier appeared to close. The New Deal had serious flaws, of course -- it excluded African-Americans from most of its programs, for example -- but the government’s response in this case was to provide the support, rather than to abandon people to the problems that governments had helped create, or at least didn’t prevent.
(For those interested, this book has informed much of my own thinking about how to contextualize climate change and the environment in the broader sweep of American history. It’s mostly not about that, but old habits die hard and climate change is everywhere! It’s about how the idea, the myth, and the symbol of the frontier has shaped American history and how it has been used to further various American dynamics: self-reliance and the pioneer, sure, but also racial violence, oppression and exclusion.)
Sometimes, drawing historical parallels can be too neat and tidy, because time moves forward and history is contingent. But it’s often instructive. In response to the manmade disasters of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, the FDR Administration recognized that only the federal government was big enough to protect people and stop things from getting worse. The administration launched soil conservation programs, subsidies for agricultural products (that one is causing us some problems today!), and the Civilian Conservation Corps, to name a few, in addition to the employment and relief programs of the New Deal.
Not necessarily the most illustrative photo of the New Deal, but I love this one: Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama, by Walker Evans
(There is, of course, an environmental legacy of many of the New Deal infrastructure projects -- namely, dams, and the Tennessee Valley Authority -- but I am not getting into that just now, though it is very important!
We face a similar challenge today with the manmade crisis of climate change, and government could meet this challenge with a similar set of proposals. We could have a Civilian Climate Corps, incentives for electrification and rural broadband, better deployment of resources to fight the wildfires that are making the air unhealthy for millions of Americans.
We could live in a country that responds to this particular closing of a frontier -- the illusion that business-as-usual, unfettered economic growth, access to cheap goods and energy is not only possible, but positive -- by opening up opportunities to everyone, especially those who have been excluded in the past: good jobs, clean air and water, corrections to a system that have allowed people to suffer from fossil fuel pollution and toxic waste because of the color of their skin, where they live, and how much money they have.
This is why the bipartisan Senate infrastructure plan could matter so much, as could House Democrats’ $3.5 trillion “soft” infrastructure/social safety net bill. A lot of what makes us vulnerable to man-made disasters is a product of what we have built and how; building things differently could be a way to change that, to make our systems and ourselves more resilient. This bill alone is not enough, obviously. And what it does put forward certainly falls far short of rational climate policy/what we actually need.
But, I've said it before and I'll scream it constantly into the void if I have to: We know what happens if we do nothing: things get worse. The biggest variable in our collective climate future is what we decide to do about it. Climate fatalism (the sense that it's already bad and going to get worse) is just a new version of denialism.
(And even climate deniers are having trouble sticking to that: A report from E&E News showed that nearly all of the earmarks in the new Homeland Security spending bill are for guarding against climate change impacts, with nearly a third going to Republican lawmakers -- including climate deniers! -- for the expressed purposes of mitigation and adaptation in their home districts. Imagine that! Reality will get you every time!)
And there are some good things in the bipartisan infrastructure package, which still aren't enough. Better might not be perfect, but better is good. There is still $65 billion to rebuild the electricity grid; $7.5 billion for both electric vehicle charging stations and zero- and low-emission buses and ferries; $39 billion to upgrade public transit systems; $55 billion to upgrade water infrastructure, including replacing lead service lines and pipes; $1 billion to reconnect communities, predominantly Black communities and other communities of color, that have been isolated by bridges and highways, for example; and more.
There is also a lot in the $3.5 trillion “soft” infrastructure bill proposed by House Democrats and President Biden, but it all might change because of Joe Manchin so maybe we can talk about that later. This bill would include a Clean Electricity Performance Program, which would incentivize utilities to switch to clean energy by paying them for producing it, and penalize them for electricity that also produces more greenhouse gas emissions.
I know it can feel like change is impossible and it’s easy to feel angry. I feel angry a lot of the time that we are living through concurrent and successive and ongoing crises, and our politicians fight over the absolute bare minimum (keeping the government open and paying back the debt we already have...?). But the problem is that if we stop paying attention and disengage and resign ourselves to chaos and dysfunction, then those who don’t share our values and priorities will have an easier time. If we don’t do it, in other words, someone else will.
I try to avoid making specific policy recommendations or endorsements, but if you feel like doing something, a good thing to do might be to try to #Call4Climate, which will tell you who to call and what to say when you get through. They have a certain set of policy priorities that you may or may not share, but it's worth checking out! This is the kind of individual behavioral change that can really make a difference.
Here are a few other things I am reading:
“Dangerous Air: As California Burns, America Breathes Toxic Smoke” - an incredible investigation from NPR California about the health effects of wildfire in California and across the country.
“Protected Too Late: U.S. Officials Report More Than 20 Extinctions” - devastating bummer but shows the importance of government regulations and the heroic work of government scientists!!!
Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon -- This report from the Indigenous Environmental Network found that Indigenous-led resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure in the U.S. and Canada over the last decade prevented or delayed the equivalent of ¼ of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. and Canada combined.
And I’m not reading this, because I wrote it ;) but I really enjoyed writing it and learning about Miranda Massie and her inspiring work creating the country’s first climate museum.
The Climate Museum is the first of its kind in the U.S. — and its founder is on a mission
This newsletter, extra-long, was brought to you by the fact that I haven’t written one in a few months.
I hope you enjoyed it, and, as always, I look forward to hearing from you!
Tatiana