As climate catastrophes envelop the world, it’s business as usual for fossil fuel zealots

Inces­sant heat waves around the globe, espe­cial­ly in the north­ern hemi­sphere, that have led to hun­dreds of deaths in coun­tries like the U.S. and India, includ­ing a thir­ty-one day streak of dai­ly highs over 110 degrees in Phoenix.

A lack of win­ter sea ice in Antarc­ti­ca, which sci­en­tists at NASA describe as hav­ing entered “unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry in the satel­lite record”.

The worst wild­fires that Cana­da has ever seen, affect­ing every sin­gle province and ter­ri­to­ry, with entire cities forced to evac­u­ate from fast-spread­ing flames.

Ocean waters off the coast of South Flori­da that are so hot, they may have set a record for the warmest sea­wa­ter ever mea­sured.

A mas­sive hur­ri­cane approach­ing the coast of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, the likes of which has not made land­fall there in cen­turies.

A megadrought in the Amer­i­can south­west that’s the worst in twelve hun­dred years and has led to mas­sive water scarci­ty prob­lems.

Rain bombs that drop mas­sive amounts of pre­cip­i­ta­tion on places unused to hav­ing to deal with flash flood­ing, like Ver­mont.

Ris­ing sea lev­els that are tak­ing out coastal wet­lands and buffer islands that part­ly shield large cities like New Orleans from the threat of trop­i­cal cyclones.

An explo­sion of a dan­ger­ous fun­gus with a mor­tal­i­ty rate of between 30% to 60% that pub­lic health experts sus­pect is spread­ing due to cli­mate dam­age.

These and oth­er signs of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe are everywhere.

Every­where.

The Earth is telling us as loud­ly as it can that it’s got a fever.

But a fright­en­ing­ly large per­cent­age of human­i­ty isn’t lis­ten­ing and does­n’t care, a stance encour­aged by fos­sil fuel zealots prof­it­ing from the plan­et’s destruction.

For right wing Repub­li­cans and oth­ers like them, it’s busi­ness as usual.

Take Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, who rep­re­sents Spokane and East­ern Wash­ing­ton in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. McMor­ris Rodgers is one of the fore­most pro­po­nents of a Repub­li­can bill that would open more fed­er­al lands to oil and gas drilling and ensure that fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies can keep on frack­ing — a slang term that refers to the destruc­tive prac­tice of hydraulic fracturing.

That bill isn’t going any­where in Con­gress, owing to Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of the Sen­ate. But Repub­li­cans want it all the same. McMor­ris Rodgers has repeat­ed­ly assailed the Biden-Har­ris’ admin­is­tra­tions very mod­est cli­mate action poli­cies as a “war on ener­gy,” declar­ing: “We must reverse course.”

At a recent town hall event in Spokane, the con­gress­woman was asked about the rapid­ly grow­ing prob­lem of cli­mate dam­age. Her response? “I acknowl­edge the cli­mate is chang­ing… I’m focused on what’s actu­al­ly going to get results.”

What’s going to get results? For who? Oil com­pa­ny executives?

Here we are, sev­er­al weeks lat­er, and mul­ti­ple dan­ger­ous fires are burn­ing out of con­trol in and around Spokane, the pop­u­lous heart of McMor­ris Rodgers’ dis­trict. And the parts of the dis­trict that aren’t burn­ing are nev­er­the­less chok­ing in smoke from fires burn­ing else­where, like British Columbia.

Unlike Gov­er­nor Inslee and Com­mis­sion­er Franz, who are both Democ­rats, McMor­ris Rodgers has yet to tweet about the fires.

But she did on Wednes­day post a state­ment attack­ing the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act and call­ing for more oil and gas drilling. It remains her most recent tweet as of today. “Repub­li­cans have solu­tions to com­bat the con­se­quences of the Radical-Left’s agen­da and make life bet­ter for peo­ple. Those solu­tions include H.R. 1, the Low­er Ener­gy Costs Act, to unleash Amer­i­can ener­gy and low­er costs,” the state­ment reads in part. (“Unleash Amer­i­can ener­gy and low­er costs” is code for let oil com­pa­nies have even more access to drill on fed­er­al lands.)

It was­n’t so long ago that cli­mate denial­ism per­vad­ed the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Nowa­days, as many reporters and com­men­ta­tors have noticed, denial­ism has been replaced with fatal­ism. That’s why we get state­ments like “I acknowl­edge the cli­mate is chang­ing… I’m focused on what’s actu­al­ly going to get results.”

Up in Cana­da, Tzepo­rah Berman, the Inter­na­tion­al Pro­gram Direc­tor of Stand.Earth, open­ly won­dered: “How much of the coun­try has to burn, how many thou­sands evac­u­at­ed and chok­ing on smoke before our coun­try takes the cli­mate emer­gency seri­ous­ly and stops expand­ing oil, gas and LNG projects and starts focus­ing on keep­ing peo­ple safe?”

Good ques­tion. The not-so-Lib­er­al gov­ern­ment of Cana­da claims to be com­mit­ted to com­bat­ing cli­mate dam­age. It’s a stat­ed pri­or­i­ty of Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau. Yet, despite know­ing the cli­mate sci­ence, one arm of Trudeau’s gov­ern­ment has gone all-in on fos­sil fuel projects like the Trans­Moun­tain pipeline, negat­ing the cli­mate action work of oth­er min­istries with­in the government.

The Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion has like­wise been approv­ing new fos­sil fuel projects, like Wil­low up in Alas­ka, despite claim­ing to be com­mit­ted to address­ing the cli­mate cri­sis. Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris was just in Seat­tle to tout the admin­is­tra­tion’s work on the issue and sound the alarm.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the Vice Pres­i­dent did not men­tion the Wil­low project or the admin­is­tra­tion’s deal with House Repub­li­cans and Joe Manchin that fast-tracks the con­struc­tion of the Moun­tain Val­ley Pipeline, a new con­duit for petro­le­um gas.

This week, Oil Change Inter­na­tion­al pub­lished a new analy­sis find­ing that the major­i­ty of the fos­sil fuel reserves with­in active fields and mines must remain in the ground or else glob­al tem­per­a­tures will rise beyond an extreme­ly dan­ger­ous point of no return that would leave many areas of the Earth uninhabitable.

“As of 2023, devel­oped oil and gas reserves alone, if ful­ly extract­ed, would cause cumu­la­tive car­bon emis­sions near­ly 25% greater than the world’s remain­ing 1.5°C car­bon [mean­ing, pol­lu­tants] bud­get,” OCI’s report explains.

“Thus, even in the the­o­ret­i­cal sce­nario where coal min­ing stops imme­di­ate­ly, devel­oped oil and gas reserves alone could push the world beyond 1.5°C.”

Gov­ern­ments need to be pre­pared to show up to forth­com­ing cli­mate sum­mits with “super-charged com­mit­ments to stop licens­ing and per­mit­ting new fos­sil fuel devel­op­ment and ini­ti­ate a fast and fair glob­al phase-out of fos­sil fuels,” it said.

“To be fair, wealthy fos­sil fuel-pro­duc­ing coun­tries must move fastest to revoke per­mits for and retire pol­lut­ing infra­struc­ture while ful­ly fund­ing a just tran­si­tion to renew­able ener­gy,” OCI adds. This is pre­cise­ly the oppo­site of what Repub­li­cans like Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers want to do.

McMor­ris Rodgers and oth­er Repub­li­cans read the news. They see what’s going on. McMor­ris Rodgers even now admits that the cli­mate is chang­ing.

Yet they remain fer­vent boost­ers of a pol­lut­ing, fos­sil fuel econ­o­my, indif­fer­ent to the con­se­quences that our destruc­tive con­sump­tion of coal, gas, and oil are caus­ing. They want to drill, plun­der, and burn like there’s no tomorrow.

They can’t imag­ine — or they don’t want to imag­ine — a dif­fer­ent future.

A future where we embrace con­ser­va­tion, tap into the poten­tial of dis­trib­uted onsite pow­er gen­er­a­tion, and ful­ly devel­op renew­able ener­gy sources.

The cli­mate cri­sis is inter­twined with all of our oth­er envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems. Like plas­tic pol­lu­tion, defor­esta­tion, species loss, tox­ic “for­ev­er” chem­i­cals in drink­ing water in and our soil, or a lack of land­fill space to deposit more trash in.

We can’t con­tin­ue to live the way we have been, it’s too unsus­tain­able. We will have to change. The longer we delay mak­ing that tran­si­tion, the worse it’s going to be, espe­cial­ly for peo­ple who are liv­ing in pover­ty and unhoused. That’s why it’s so impor­tant that we stand up to the fos­sil fuel lob­by and their enablers. We can’t let busi­ness as usu­al today destroy the Earth for future generations.