The Real Distraction

LISTENING: to my favorite band, STRFKR
FEELING: exhausted from working overtime to meet deadlines
SEEING: the sun begin its evening descent

I'm tired, and I'm pissed. All over my feed, I see people — some friends, some strangers, some writers and thinkers I've long admired — claim that the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a fluke. "Fake news," they say. "Staged!" they exclaim. My response is a simple, "WTF?"

I don't care to debate the details of Trump's fiery fist wave or of the crowd's reaction to it all. None of this is relevant. The conspiracy theorists of the left wind up looking just as nutty as the conspiracy theorists of the right. What good does that do? How do any of these conversations move the nation toward a presidency where climate action matters and where the most vulnerable are afforded the opportunity of a future?

These types of conversations take away from what the public should be talking about: policy. Yes, it's oh so very boring, but policy affects our daily lives. It affects our access to affordable mass transit. It governs people's access to the types of guns used to successfully kill tens of thousands of people in the U.S. a year. It will determine what our energy infrastructure looks like in 50 years.

Welcome to Possibilities, a creative climate newsletter on the possibilities that lie where crisis meets community. I’m Yessenia Funes, and we need to talk about the 2024 presidential election.

I hate politics. I hate covering it. I hate talking about it. I hate the ugliness of it. It's incredibly disillusioning as a 31-year-old to live in a country where we're forced to pick between two shitty options. It's even more disturbing, however, to live in a country where the populace pays more attention to fictional internet theories than the actual proposals lawmakers are considering.

I trust you all have heard about Project 2025. I'm no expert and will not attempt to become one in time to write this newsletter. The Atlantic's Zoë Schlanger wrote an important piece this week highlighting one idea from the right-wing fantasy playbook. They want to privatize weather forecasts. That means you would have to pay to access the news and receive emergency weather alerts. We take for granted the information and resources available to us now essentially for free.

These are the types of conversations we need to have with one another. I don't believe for one second that the Republican party staged Trump's shooting or that the young man who shot him was willing to martyr himself. I do believe that the conservative right-wing arm taking over the Republican party wants to do all it can to harm the most vulnerable in the country: LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, poor people, Black and Brown people.

I do worry that this wave of political violence — from the Jan. 6 insurrection to the attempted assassination of a former president — signals that the country is on the brink of a dangerous Civil War. We're in a pivotal moment in U.S. history. What we decide in November will determine whether my loved ones and I will be safe for much longer here.

We need to focus on the urgency of this moment. Journalists do. Civic society does. Online content creators do. We can't waste time on what-ifs. We must look at what is. A Trump presidency would be disastrous to the planet and the myriad people who care for it. I have covered his presidency once before. I dread having to do it again. 🌀

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.

The total number of U.S. heat wave deaths has reached at least 28 people.

The remnants of Hurricane Beryl resulted in deadly floods that killed at least two people in Vermont.

The first wildfire death of the California season is here.

Eastern Afghanistan has been hit with heavy rains that triggered disastrous floods. At least 40 people are dead.

Currently Reading

Bill McKibben writes for The Nation: "Trump has a record on climate change—a baleful record. Project 2025 makes very clear that he will build on that record, and this time not from a standing start."

Emily Atkin's HEATED has an important edition out this week on the environmental defenders facing death for their activism. Her lede is everything: "Before Saturday, the last president shot in the head was Quinto Inuma Alvarado."

It's still hot AF in New York City, and local news site Hell Gate shares the perspective of someone who is incarcerated (in partnership with the Prison Journalism Project).

Jacob Baynham has some gorgeous prose for Noema about lithium and all its wonders. Loved reading this.

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