Blue Mass Group

Historic flooding, caused by a “bomb cyclone”, has struck parts of Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri, causing damages that will exceed $1.3 billion in Nebraska alone. NOAA predicts this will only get worse this spring:

This map depicts the locations where there is a greater than 50-percent chance of major, moderate or minor flooding during March through May, 2019. (NOAA)

Nearly two-thirds of the Lower 48 states face an elevated risk for flooding through May, with the potential for major or moderate flooding in 25 states, according to NOAA’s U.S. Spring Outlook issued today. The majority of the country is favored to experience above-average precipitation this spring, increasing the flood risk.

…“The extensive flooding we’ve seen in the past two weeks will continue through May and become more dire and may be exacerbated in the coming weeks as the water flows downstream,” said Ed Clark, director of NOAA’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “This is shaping up to be a potentially unprecedented flood season, with more than 200 million people at risk for flooding in their communities.”

My emphasis — 200 million people at risk.

We are always asked not to politicize such events. This request nakedly serves fossil fuel interests, who don’t want us to talk about what their profit-lust is doing to our world, to our communities, to our food supply.

So I’ll point out that Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa are represented by six Republican climate-denying Senators:

• Nebraska: Ben Sasse and Deb Fischer
• Missouri: Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley
• Iowa: Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley

None of these Senators have a ranking higher that 14% from the League of Conservation Voters. (Hawley doesn’t have one yet, but you know where he’ll land.) None have advocated strong, immediate action on climate; most deny or dither on whether it’s even real or man-made.

That’s an absolutely critical abdication of responsibility for their communities — though honestly, one has to put the blame on the voters themselves, who put these folks into office. Politics is not a business of courage: Elected officials generally do what is asked of them, or they get replaced. The voters of these states have chosen ideology over their own self-preservation; over their own physical safety and livelihoods. I can only attribute that to a media failure, which has put climate change as just another tribal political issue to fight over — and therefore to ignore as too lefty, too hippie, too polarizing — as opposed to a matter of mutual self-preservation. These states have state climatologists (thank you On Point and Meghna Chakrabarti for featuring one from Illinois this week) — who get ignored at the federal level, I’m guessing because of the influence of Fox News, the Koch brothers, et al.

Now, this presents a political opportunity. That will sound crass, but politics is how we get things done, or not done. Very simply, very progressive Democrats will act on climate; Republicans and middling-Democrats will not. Our own Elizabeth Warren has been touring the country, going to places Democrats don’t usually go, and delivering policy-heavy speeches, connecting real policy plans to real lives. It is long past time for progressive Democrats to go on offense in the places left vulnerable by climate change, which is everywhere.  As NOAA predicts, two-thirds of the population of the United States will be vulnerable just this spring alone. Could this get political? Do you think?

The Republicans turned their backs on their own constituents’ most basic needs of physical safety. They simply have to be replaced — or change their minds rather drastically. Someone’s got to go in and issue the challenge — why not Warren?

I happened to be in Albany yesterday for the Youth Climate Strike, happening concurrently at 11am all over the world. We showed up just before 11am, and saw hardly anyone there. I’ve been to protests like that; it can be a little demoralizing. But then we heard a ruckus around the corner … and like the cavalry, in marched about 200 high school kids chanting and shouting.

(Also, there were cookies.)

It was apparently a similar scene at the State House in Boston:

Hundreds of young people striking outside the MA State House right now! The energy here is amazing and inspiring! 🌎 (video better with volume on) #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/xXWZb8zPzh

— Mass Sierra Club (@MassSierraClub) March 15, 2019

My throat caught a little bit in Albany yesterday. How can it be that we adults have abdicated our responsibilities so gravely, that our kids have to come out on a school day and beg for their futures? It was inspiring — and it was also a fearsome public shaming. We haven’t just failed to love our neighbor as ourselves; we’ve failed to adequately love our own children as much as we love gasoline. And the consequences are upon us, an iniquity visited upon our children for countless generations.

And let there be no question: Our own Governor and legislature continue to dither. Neither our Speaker nor governor will lead on moving Massachusetts to 100% renewable energy by 2045, much less a Green New Deal. Here’s the governor’s bold, bold leadership on averting catastrophe:

Asked for Baker’s position on the aforementioned legislation that would shift Massachusetts to all-renewable energy use by 2045, the spokesman said the governor will “carefully review any legislation that reaches his desk.”

So, our governor will “carefully review” if our kids get to live on a habitable planet. Now, he could offer to help write such legislation. Especially in the absence of a positive federal role, his leadership would mean something on a national scale.

Those who imagine that these kids (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ed Markey, and countless climate scientists) are “politically naive”; that pales in comparison to the less-than-innocent blindness of those who imagine that “moderate” half-measures will save us. At great length, repeatedly, and over the course of decades, we have been warned by the best knowledge available to us. These kids do not demonstrate naiveté: They simply do not accept that “political reality” dooms them to a nasty, brutish and short life on a decimated planet; scrapping for food, water, and shelter in a world of hazards and scarcity.

I am exceedingly grateful to, and inspired by, the kids who took yesterday to fight for all of us. I hope every adult leader — in politics and media, at every level — is struck with a moral fear and trembling. We dare not fail at the task ahead of us.