A majority of Americans have come to accept that climate change is real, but do they view it as a priority?
A heat wave here in the U.S. is scorching the Northeast and swaths of the Midwest, while parts of Europe continue to swelter. But will this merciless heat, which will only grow more intense if we don’t drastically reduce our greenhouse-gas emissions, drive more action on climate change? We’re taking a closer look.
Unprecedented heat
The science is clear. Climate change is making heat waves hotter, longer, and more common — as evidenced in the Northeast this weekend. Records were shattered in the region: It reached 100 degrees in Boston, 97 degrees in Providence, R.I., and 101 degrees in Newark, N.J. Meanwhile in California, parched conditions led to the explosion of the Oak Fire, which has already ravaged thousands of acres near Yosemite National Park and forced residents to flee, the AP reports.
Across the Atlantic, temperatures in London hit 104 degrees last week for the first time in recorded history. In Spain and Portugal, 2,000 people died from heat-related causes, while wildfires ravaged 80 square miles in Southwestern France.
What’s behind these simultaneous heat waves?
Punishing heat in the U.S., Europe, and China appear to all be connected to changes in the jet stream — a band of wind high in the atmosphere that circles the globe and typically brings cooler air from the North Atlantic Ocean. However, the jet stream seems to be growing weaker during the summer as the Arctic warms, an atmospheric scientist tells the Financial Times.
That slowdown can make what’s called the “omega block” pattern more likely. An omega block occurs when the jet stream forms into a U-bend shape. Currently, there’s a pattern of five big waves in the jet stream (called wavenumber 5) and that may persist for weeks, causing the simultaneous heat waves across the northern hemisphere, per the FT.
Will heat waves spur more climate action?
According to a recent poll by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 71 percent of Americans have come to accept that climate change is a reality. But what’s not clear is if they view dealing with climate change and its growing repercussions as a priority, the Christian Science Monitor reports. A Pew Research Center survey found that only 42 percent of Americans say that “dealing with climate change” should be a top concern for lawmakers, with issues like strengthening the economy, reducing health care costs, and improving education, ranking higher up.
However, there’s a silver lining: Experts have found that of extreme weather events, heat waves are the ones most likely to inspire people to demand action on climate change, the CSM reports. And as the nation sweats it out, calls are growing for President Biden to declare a climate emergency.
What would happen if a climate emergency was declared?
Some Democrats are calling for President Biden to declare climate change a national emergency, a move that would grant him temporary powers to ramp up renewable energy and curb fossil fuel imports and exports to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Every president has declared at least one national emergency during their time in office, according to the New York Times. And 58 percent of Americans say they’d be behind it, per a recent survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. However, some view it as an overreach of executive power, which could set a dangerous precedent. Others see it as essential to saving our planet: “If this isn’t what you pull your emergency powers for, then nothing is,” Jean Su, the director of the Energy Justice Program at the Center for Biological Diversity, tells the NYT.
