Whether the weather
Thoughtful response from a reader:
“Hi Therese, you and the Leading Ladies are amazing! Tireless, dedicated, and so on point. You’re all doing so much to make a difference.”
Eliška Meyers
San Francisco
Dear Leading Ladies,
The term “climate change” sounds more benign than the truths held within it. In fact, the climate change we are experiencing — and will experience in the coming years — is an existential threat we can no longer ignore. And, since we are most attentive to what affects us most closely, we decided to take a look at the specific risks to the northeastern United States.
First off, the controversy over climate change and whether it is manmade or a natural occurrence is beside the point. If people try to engage you in a discussion about the source of climate change, we encourage you to deflect that line of debate. Climate change is here, and it is killing plants, animals, and people. It is displacing families due to wildfires, storms, floods, pathogens, and disease. And it will continue to have profound economic and social justice repercussions across our society. That is the indisputable reality, whatever anyone thinks is the cause.
What’s unique about the Northeast?
As for our area, some 64 million people live in the area from the mid-Atlantic to New England. “As both the most heavily forested and most densely populated region in the country, challenges are complex and unique” in the Northeast, according to the Northeast Climate Science Adaptation Center (NECASC), a partnership between federal and university researchers.
Projected changes in the Northeast, according to NECASC, include a sea level rise three times the global average; risk to half the area’s fisheries and coastal species; a rise in temperature of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2035; and an increase in deaths per year due to dangerous air quality. Furthermore, according to NASA, infrastructure, ecosystems, and agriculture will be “increasingly compromised” by “more precipitation, longer growing seasons, higher temperatures, greater storm intensity, and higher sea level.” Furthermore, “these physical changes may lead to large numbers of evacuated and displaced populations and damaged infrastructure,” NECASC concludes.
Graphs from toolkit.climate.gov illustrate observed and projected impacts of excess heat on emergency room visits in Rhode Island.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) further enumerates the many ways climate change does – and will – impact human health in the Northeast. As in all areas of the country, those living in urban areas are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat-related illness and illnesses exacerbated by air pollutants. The old, the poor, immigrants, and those with physical impairments, are most at risk since they are likely to lack access to air conditioning, good health care, and fresh air. In areas beyond cities, soil erosion and runoff can cause infection to plants and seafood that gets passed on to people.
Unique to New England, the CDC explains, is “the historical development of industry and commerce that occurred along rivers, canals, coasts, and other bodies of water [so that] these areas often have a higher density of contaminated sites, waste management facilities, and petroleum storage facilities that are potentially vulnerable to flooding. As a result, increases in flood frequency or severity could increase the spread of contaminants into soils and waterways, resulting in increased risks to human health.”
How will it affect our lives?
But what does all this mean for us? Warming, flooding, and storms could mean that communities like Beverly, Massachusetts, are underwater in the foreseeable future, displacing countless residents; that our drinking water is polluted; that our food sources are depleted; and that our air is unbreathable. Climate change can no longer be dismissed as the hobby of a tree hugger or bird lover. If climate change is not curtailed, the lives of our children and grandchildren are in peril.
What can be done to stem the tide?
President Biden’s American Jobs Plan promises to address many of the challenges of the climate crisis. “The American Jobs Plan calls for investing $35 billion toward boosting research and development for emerging clean energy technologies—such as battery storage, carbon capture and sequestration, hydrogen energy, and offshore wind—that will help the United States achieve its goal of cutting its carbon emissions in half by 2030,” according to Jeff Turrentine of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “The establishment of a new federal Energy Efficiency and Clean Energy Standard, which the American Jobs Plan calls for, would work to rid the U.S. power sector entirely of fossil fuels by 2035 through generating electricity via carbon-free sources and conserving that power with energy-saving measures.”
At the same time, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, now chair of the Budget Committee, is in a position to oversee the introduction by Democrats of a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that would contain several major climate proposals, including a clean electricity standard, a crackdown on fossil fuel subsidies, and a new civilian climate corps. This is good news, but both measures need public support. We need to let our senators know we favor the American Jobs Plan and the reconciliation bill.
And, while we know that the heavy lifting must be done by government and industry, it never hurts to do our part and set an example by driving a hybrid or electric car; getting solar panels or buying power from a solar farm; and limiting our carbon footprint as much as possible.
By the way, did you know that people with hope live longer? A study at Harvard says so, so it must be true.
Therese
Judy
Mary
Beth
Leading Ladies Executive Team
Leadingladiesvote.org
ladies@leadingladies.org