It’s mid-October in Washington, when the outdoorsy types can hike without an ample supply of bug repellent, sit around fire pits, replace the shot of gin with whisky and generally embrace the autumnal spirit.
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Except that it hit 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) this past weekend. That was not bad enough to keep us confined to the air-conditioned indoors – like we are for most of the summer – but certainly not cool enough to break out the jumpers and flannels.
Not that anyone should cry over these tribulations. The absence of crisp autumn air doesn’t compare with the deprivations of the millions of Americans affected by hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Milton ripped the roof off a stadium, left at least 24 dead and millions without power and caused flooding across Florida. Helene, which utterly destroyed a region that few people saw as being at risk for such a natural disaster, was the storm that showed us our new reality. The fate that our scientists warned us about – the one that too many of us swiped past on our news feeds – is here and getting worse.
Many of us who have listened to the climate scientists, watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and thus wonder why more people aren’t alarmed about what’s happening are hoping for the one and only possible silver lining to these tragedies: that they turn out to be the October surprise of this year’s US presidential election, one that finally makes Republican opposition to measures meant to lower carbon emissions a losing issue.
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To prevent this, however, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and others willing to trade in the most outlandish of conspiracy theories let loose with a tsunami of lies. They know that voters confronted with the most violent effects of climate change will want an easier target for their anger than an accumulation of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, something for which we are all responsible.