Fire and Flood, Drought and Deluge

It had already rained nine or ten inches when my brother, who lives just outside Asheville, North Carolina, texted the family to let us know they were okay.  When I talked with him briefly the next morning, he said they’d been shop-vac-ing their flooded basement most of the night and were exhausted, and the rain kept coming.  That was early Friday morning, and the last any of us heard from him.  We had been gathering in Ohio for my sister’s memorial service, and for all of that day and the next, the constant refrain among us was, “I haven’t been able to reach Bruce. Have you?”  None of us had – on Friday, on Saturday, on Sunday. By then, we were all aware of the tragedy unfolding in Asheville.  Finally, sometime on Monday, we were able to reach them.  My brother and his wife had been without water, power, internet, and cellphone for four days, but they were okay.  Their house was still standing and they had a tankful of gas in their car, which is how they were able to charge their phones.  They’d flushed toilets by draining water from the hot water heater and a neighbor had loaned them a camp stove. My sister-in-law had mistakenly ordered forty cans of tuna, and it had stood them in good stead after they’d eaten all their perishables. Once I-26 opened, they were able to make the long, circuitous drive to northern Georgia where Gen’s son lives.  They would be all right.

Back home in Minnesota, we were under Red Flag warnings.  Since June’s non-stop rain it had barely rained a drop.  Four months without rain had plunged much of the state back into drought conditions.  With record high temperatures and high winds, conditions were ripe for forest fires.  Everywhere I hiked, especially the highest elevations, seemed like a tinder box that could be set ablaze by the slightest spark, and the stream beds were mostly dry.

Then Hurricane Milton hit the gulf coast of Florida.  Friends there whose house had been damaged a week before by Hurricane Helene headed to Alabama, trying to outrun the storm.  When they returned, they found their home destroyed. 

A month later, when a loved one suffering from dehydration sought help at a local urgent care clinic, they were turned away due to a shortage of IV fluids.  The main manufacturer and distributor of IV fluids, Baxter International’s North Cove plant, located in Marion, North Carolina, was flooded out by Hurricane Helene.  60% of the nation’s IV fluids are manufactured there, and with the plant not operational, hospitals and clinics are rationing their use of IV fluids for the most urgent cases and critical patients.[i]

These stories of the ways climate change has hit close to home in the past few weeks are only the tip of the iceberg.  Climate change knows no national borders and boundaries. A year ago, one third of the entire country of Pakistan suffered devastating floods, even though they contribute only 1% of the world’s greenhouse gases. In Malawi, thousands suffered from heatstroke and dehydration due to average temperatures of 115 degrees. Just this past week, a year’s worth of rain fell in just 24 hours in Spain, causing massive flooding with a death toll of nearly 160 people. A few days ago The Lancet released their 2024 report of the effects of climate change on human health worldwide, stating that of the fifteen indicators monitoring the health effects of climate change, ten have reached concerning new records: “The rapidly changing climate poses threats to communities in every country, who are faced with rising temperatures, deadly weather events, changes in suitability for infectious disease transmission, wildfires and droughts.”[ii] 

Climate change is undeniable, devastating communities and impacting every aspect our lives large and small – from inflation and the cost of housing and food, to migration and immigration, to war and violent conflict, to health and the very air we breathe and the water on which all life depends. We briefly become aware of those massive weather-related events of climate change deemed newsworthy, but the everyday creep of climate change is so slow that for the most part it doesn’t make the news. We may even come to regard it as simply the new normal. Yet, as the coral reefs die, the permafrost melts, and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – better known as the Gulf Stream – begins to collapse, we are confronting what climate activist Bill McKibben has called “. . . the greatest danger humanity had ever faced.”[iii]

Yet, astonishingly, climate change is not front and center as the issue affecting all of us and the world in the 2024 presidential election, though most of the issues that the electorate is focused on – the economy, immigration, inflation – are intrinsically related to climate change. And while the US electorate may not be focused on the issue of climate change, the rest of the world is closely watching not only the presidential but also Congressional elections, knowing full well that the stakes for the health, well-being, and survival of humanity and the planet could not be higher.

With regard to climate change and the future of the planet, the difference between the two presidential candidates could not be more stark.  Donald Trump has continually called climate change a “hoax.”  When he was previously in office he set the fight against climate change backwards — from removing all the solar panels that President Obama had had installed on the White House to pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Accord. Should he win, he plans to roll back all regulations on oil and gas drilling.  Project 2025, which sets the agenda for a Trump presidency, calls for the elimination of energy efficiency standards, ending subsidies for electric vehicles, taking the US out of international climate treaties as well as agreements that would help other nations adapt to climate change, and repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been called one of the biggest actions to fight climate change in the world.[iv] Taking its lead from its leader, the Republican Party platform is completely silent about the climate, the environment, and energy policy.

While centering most of her talking points about climate change on jobs and the economy rather than climate change itself, Kamala Harris has a clear record of regarding climate change as an extremely urgent issue and of acting to address it. In her remarks to the COP 28 Leaders’ Session last year she said: “The urgency of this moment is clear.  The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging.  And we must make up for lost time. And we cannot afford to be incremental.  We need transformative change and exponential impact.  As nations, we must have the ambition that is necessary to meet this moment. We must lead with courage and conviction, and we must treat the climate crisis as the existential threat that it truly is.  It is, dare I say, our duty and our obligation.”[v]  And in contrast to the Republican Party platform, the Democratic Party platform mentions the “climate crisis” and actions to address climate change over eighty times, devoting several pages to specific policy actions to address the climate crisis, energy efficiency and costs, and environmental justice. In 2022, the Biden-Harris administration passed the historic Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which has led to the creation of over 270 clean energy projects across 44 states and created over 170,000 jobs, the majority in Red states, and at the same time created “Justice 40” to insure that 40% of the sustainable development and economic benefits of the IRA will go into communities that have been burdened by environmental injustice. In addition, the administration pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and 100% carbon free electricity by 2035 – “one of the most aggressive climate agendas” the world has seen to date. [vi]

In 2020, eight million registered voters in the US who said that the environment and climate change was their #1 issue did not vote in the presidential election.  In 2022, even more, 13 million, did not vote in the midterms.  We cannot afford such callous disregard and inaction in the 2024 election. We are at a crucial moment, with the earth at so many tipping points, that failure to vote with the planet and climate change foremost in our minds in this presidential election would be the height of US voter ignorance and arrogance and threaten life on earth as we know it. Yes, there are many complicated issues in this election and nothing is perfect, but time is of the essence.  We cannot afford not to act.

In an interview in Ayana Johnson’s important book, What If We Get It Right?, food justice advocate Leah Penniman told of how her ancestral grandmothers forced onto slave ships braided seeds into their hair to insure food and a future for their descendants. She goes on to say, “ . . if these ancestors, facing horrors I can’t imagine, still had the hope to carry seeds, then I sure as hell better not give up on my descendants.”[vii]  In this election season, I echo her urgent plea not to give up on ours and the world’s. Vote as if their lives depend on it, because they do.

[i] Shortage of IV fluids leads to canceled surgeries : Shots - Health News : NPR

[ii] 2024 Report - Lancet Countdown

[iii] MicKibben quoted in Johnson, 141.

[iv] The Global Story Podcast BBC World Service: How the US Election Could Change Our Climate, Bing Videos

[v] Remarks by Vice President Harris at COP28 Leaders' Session, "Fast-Tracking the Just, Equitable, and Orderly Energy Transition" | The White House

[vi]The Global Story Podcast BBC World Service: How the US Election Could Change Our Climate,Bing Videos

[vii] Penniman quoted in Johnson, 69.