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Among the issues the candidates will address, climate disruption belongs at the top.
What would a realistic presidential debate look like in a nation where 100 million Americans recently sweltered under a massive heat dome while their nation led the world in oil and gas production—and consumption?
It's a fair bet it wouldn't look like the debate we'll have tonight.
If past is prologue, CNN moderators will devote no more than 10 minutes to a topic that’s easily worth a whole debate. Among the issues the candidates will address, climate disruption belongs at the top.
Yes, voters may be focused on pocketbook issues—such as rising prices, jobs, housing, childcare and health. But it’s the moderators’ job to remind them how a rapidly changing climate could exacerbate or overshadow all of these concerns.
Worried about the immigrants on the southern borders? The Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) predicts that around 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050 due to climate change and natural disasters.
Health? Air pollution largely from fossil fuel burning already causes 7.5-8 million deaths a year due air pollution. It’s aggravated by higher temperatures. Hotter weather also spreads pest-borne illnesses, including Lyme disease and West Nile Virus.
Housing? Increased flood, fire, and hurricane risks lower property values. Rising seas threaten trillions of dollars worth of coastal property. Home insurance costs are already soaring, and policies are becoming less available in areas increasingly at risk from floods, hurricanes, and fire.
Heat waves meanwhile, aside from their health effects, erode purchasing power by increasing utility bills as people use more air conditioning. Blackouts and brownouts then become more frequent, as utility circuits are overwhelmed.
Dire as these issues may be, they pale in comparison to the apocalyptic outcomes scientists are now warning us against: irreversible melting of West Antarctica and Greenland, halting of the “conveyor belt” deep ocean current that distributes heat and moisture around the globe, and the release of vast amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the thawing Arctic permafrost.
The scientists who have correctly warned us about destabilizing the climate for years now are projecting that by 2050, global temperatures may rise 2ºC or more—curtains for nearly one in five land animals and a third of all insect species will be a high risk of extinction.
So if I were posing the questions tonight, I’d ask:
News of Mike Wirth's 2023 compensation came after March was deemed the 10th month in a row to be the hottest ever recorded.
The chief executive of the U.S. oil giant Chevron saw his pay jump by more than 12% in 2023 as continued emissions from fossil fuel corporations helped push global temperatures to record heights.
Citing a new securities filing, Reutersreported Wednesday that Chevron CEO Mike Wirth received $26.5 million in total compensation last year. Chevron, the second-largest oil company in the U.S. by revenue, reported $21.3 billion in profits in 2023—a haul it used to lavish shareholders with buybacks and dividends.
News of Wirth's 2023 compensation came a day after the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announced that last month was the hottest March on record globally. The organization said March marked "the 10th month in a row that is the warmest on record for the respective month of the year."
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, said in a statement that "March 2024 continues the sequence of climate records toppling for both air temperature and ocean surface temperatures."
"Stopping further warming requires rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions," Burgess stressed.
But oil giants like Chevron, the primary drivers of the global climate emergency, have been rolling back their already tepid climate commitments and buying up rival oil producers—a signal that the industry is bent on continuing to drill as much as possible despite increasingly dire warnings from scientists.
A Carbon Majors report released earlier this week found that Chevron is one of just 57 oil, gas, coal, and cement producers responsible for 80% of global CO2 emissions from those industries.
A separate analysis published last month by Global Witness estimated that the emissions of Chevron, Shell, TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil, and BP could cause 11.5 million additional premature deaths around the world before the end of the century.
"In the past few months, ExxonMobil and Chevron have invested more than $100 billion into new oil and gas reserves," the human rights group noted. "BP and Shell weakened their climate pledges. And TotalEnergies plans to ramp up production in the next few years."
"Fossil fuel companies' systematic spreading of climate change denial, combined with lobbying, has slowed the transformation towards an energy system built on renewables," Global Witness added. "And yet, the supermajors are asking us to trust them, to allow them to be the ultimate arbiter, despite the massive profits they're making."
"As remarkable as this might appear, it is not really surprising as the continuous warming of the climate system inevitably leads to new temperature extremes," said the head of the E.U. climate service.
Last month was the warmest February on record, the European Union’s climate service said Wednesday, marking the ninth consecutive month of unprecedented heat as the climate crisis continues to drive up global temperatures.
Climate scientists say the climate crisis, without a doubt, is to blame for increased temperatures.
Not only was it warm above sea level—global ocean temperatures also reached a record high last month. That's not just for February but for any month on record.
"Ocean warming has prompted concerns about the mass bleaching of coral reefs. It also raises global sea levels and can help to fuel higher intensity hurricanes," the BBCreports. "Unusually warm waters may also have been a factor in another exceptional month for Antarctic sea ice. The three lowest minimum extents in the satellite era have now occurred in the last three years."
The #C3S's monthly climate bulletin is out now:
📈 February 2024 was globally the warmest on record;
📈 Global Sea Surface Temperatures hit record highs.
▶️https://t.co/XEmBnArhh6 pic.twitter.com/uUubVY9c05
— Copernicus ECMWF (@CopernicusECMWF) March 7, 2024
Arctic sea ice is also disappearing, and the Arctic could be virtually ice-free during the summer within a decade.
"February joins the long streak of records of the last few months," said Carlo Buentempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. "As remarkable as this might appear, it is not really surprising as the continuous warming of the climate system inevitably leads to new temperature extremes."
“The climate responds to the actual concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere so, unless we manage to stabilize those, we will inevitably face new global temperature records and their consequences,” Buentempo added.
The last year has been over 1.5°C above pre-industrial averages—1.56°C, to be exact—but that won't signify a breach of the goals set in the Paris Agreement unless temperatures remain elevated for the next few years.
"A year ago, the fact that the global temperature for a particular month would reach 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level would have been considered exceptional," Julien Nicolas, a senior scientist at Copernicus, toldThe New York Times.
The world will have to get off of fossil fuels in order to halt runaway warming, and this year could help determine the future of the climate, considering one of the people running to lead the nation appears destined to unleash billions of tons of additional planet-warming emissions should he return to office.