< 5 Minutes on Climate & Energy

LISTENING: to Sabrina Carpenter because I can't listen to Donald Trump or Kamala Harris anymore
FEELING: frustrated
SEEING: my light catcher shower my office in rainbow speckles

Who else stayed up to watch the debate last night? I'm not a big politics person, so I wasn't exactly planning on it. Then, I got home from a day with my sister and remembered it was happening. I couldn't not turn it on at that point.

Here's the thing, though: I hate politics, man. Everything about it is so freaking icky to me. And watching last night's debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump reminded me yet again of how gross politics is.

Candidates and politicians always say whatever they think will appeal to whatever group of voters they're interested in. But what about the truth? What about science? What about the people who won't vote in this election but whose lives will be so deeply affected by the U.S. president's decisions?

Welcome to Possibilities, a creative climate newsletter on the possibilities that lie where crisis meets community. I’m Yessenia Funes, and I can't help but wonder what would be possible if the climate crisis got the attention it deserved.

Climate change made the tiniest appearance during the debate. I counted just over four minutes dedicated to the issue — well, those minutes mostly went toward Trump's random comments about fracking, fossil fuels, and the various pipelines President Joe Biden didn't build and the ones Vladimir Putin did build. There was Trump's heartbrokenness over the Keystone XL pipeline that never was and his outrage over Russia's Nord Stream pipeline system.

Such little time toward climate is to be expected, I guess. It's kind of ridiculous that most of what we got was actually on energy and fossil fuels. Sigh. The climate crisis always takes a back seat during election cycles — the people who are living with its impacts now, the communities losing culture to rising seas, the families trying to rebuild after losing a loved one to a wildfire.

I still remember working at Earther when my former editor Brian Kahn was attempting to organize a presidential debate strictly focused on climate change. I think this was back in 2019. It never happened, but the effort was admirable. Climate change is the sort of topic that deserves its own stage.

Last night, it got a single question from the moderators. Meanwhile, the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden's landmark climate legislation, got a nod from Harris — not to underscore its climate benefits but to highlight how the law opened new fracking leases in the U.S.

I've already written about how climate justice organizers feel about the Inflation Reduction Act and its fossil fuel giveaway. It's strange to see the vice president herald that as an accomplishment rather than the disappointing concession it was — one that resulted in a divided climate movement that, to this day, is still fighting among itself over the merits of the Inflation Reduction Act. For some, it was a major win. For others, it was yet another blow to frontline communities earmarked as sacrifice zones by their own government.

Climate Justice After Inflation Reduction Act’s Fossil Fuel Failure - Atmos

What comes next for climate justice organizers given the Inflation Reduction Act’s harmful fossil fuel provisions?

AtmosAtmos

This is why I hate politics. Harris has to attract more center-of-left voters who don't want the progressive politics you or I might. I get that. But we can't have climate policy that pours billions into clean energy while simultaneously upholding the fossil fuel industry. Scientists have been clear for years that the world needs to stop extracting and burning fossil fuels if we're going to successfully cut greenhouse gas emissions and avoid a worst-case scenario for the planet and its inhabitants.

Otherwise, the planet will keep heating up, and we're fucked. It's that simple.

Our leaders can't have it both ways. They can't be climate champions and fossil fuel proponents. Not anymore. And, look, I get that when folks are trying to win, they say what they must, but how can people trust them when that's the game? It's just so freaking icky.

In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N.-sanctioned scientific body on all things climate, made clear that the world had 10 years to cut global emissions by nearly half. That's what it would take to keep the planet's warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Let's be clear: This level of warming would still be disastrous, but it would be a lot less disastrous than higher temperatures, especially for low-lying nations and already-hot regions.

It's been nearly six years since the IPCC put out that report that scared all of us shitless. And what do we have to show for it? Record-breaking fossil fuel emissions? Stanford University experts put the planet on course to speed past 1.5 before 2030 and reach 1.7 degrees Celsius quickly after.

Words and political promises won't cut it. Not when lives are on the line. Too many are already dying. Just look at this week's Rest in Power section: One typhoon, likely supercharged by fossil fuel emissions, is responsible for 155 deaths. Just look at every newsletter edition since I started writing over a year again.

I fucking hate politics. 🌀

Rest in Power

While we can't say for certain that climate change led to these specific weather events (we need attribution studies for that), we do know that the Earth's rising temperatures are already creating more disasters like these.

In northern Vietnam, Typhoon Yagi has brought even more devastation, raising the death toll to at least 155 people — a dramatic rise from last week's number.

In Alaska, authorities believe heavy rains triggered a landslide that killed one person and injured three others a few weeks ago.

Currently Reading

Maybe it's because I had just gotten my period or maybe because this is damn good writing, but this story in The Atavist had me in tears. Israel nearly killed teenager Layan Albaz. She lost her legs — and too many family members. Now, she's in the U.S. trying to learn how to walk again.

From Genevieve Guenther for The New Republic: "In contrast to Trump’s extremist and selfish climate denial, Harris must include climate in her fight to preserve America as a nation of endless possibilities, where we protect the futures of the children we love."

I missed this story from Maxine Joselow in the Post last month. She attempts to figure out why presidents keep failing to reign in fossil fuels.

Collage

I hope to get back to writing some of my children's book next week while I'm in Kansas next week visiting my best friend and hanging with her daughter. Talk to you from there next week!

- Yessenia xx