USA TODAY International Edition
California’s hellscape: Climate future is now
Heat wave, wildfires, blackouts — and COVID
SAN FRANCISCO — The lightning struck just as I glanced outside my second- floor window one recent morning, one of dozens of strikes in the Bay Area in the pre- dawn darkness as a violent heat storm bore down on Northern California. This one caught, and within minutes, a massive tree was in flames less than a mile from my house. Sirens blared.
Lightning storms are rare in this part of the world, but wildfires are not. This was the first time I had seen one start, though, and by the time I grabbed my wallet and awakened my wife to help bang on neighbors’ doors, firefighters had doused it. Others have not been so lucky, as you’ve no doubt read.
An apocalyptic combination of brutal heat and nearly 12,000 lightning strikes ignited more than 600 wildfires across the state in the past week, burning hundreds of thousands of acres and sending thousands fleeing their homes in places like Napa Valley and Monterey. Oh, and COVID- 19.
To add to the chaos, energy regulators bungled the heat wave, running out of electricity just as weekend temperatures soared above 100 degrees in the late afternoons.
In scenes many residents remember from the bad old days of Enron Corp. two decades ago, California’s Independent Systems Operator ( ISO) had to institute rolling blackouts for two nights.
Critics were quick to blame the state’s enthusiasm for renewable energy, citing its use of solar power for the majority of its energy during daytime hours. The solar power wasn’t the issue, though. It was poor forecasting on how much energy would be needed to sustain the millions of residential air conditioners fired up in those few hottest hours before darkness.
California ISO typically sources energy from neighboring states when it runs low, but because of the heat wave, there was little energy to share.
Coming climate battles
Bureaucratic bungling is nothing new in California. But the events of the past week give us a glimpse of what the coming climate battles will look like: Natural disasters. Extreme distress, particularly among the low- income, minority neighborhoods. Finger- pointing by politicians and regulators. Lack of preparation.
Across America, we’re getting a taste of what the next few decades hold in terms of climate change. More hurricanes, two of them aimed at the Gulf Coast this week. Rising seas in the East. Flooding in the Midwest. Fires in the West. Water shortages. Angry people.
Climate scientists point to the turmoil this year as proof that the changes aren’t just coming; they’re here. The damage we’ve done through greenhouse gas emissions is not something we can turn off. It’s done. We can only hope to act so that it won’t get worse than this.
Seven years ago, I worked with talented USA TODAY reporters across the United States to produce a series on what various parts of the country would look like in two decades. It’s clear it is going to be even more dire than what experts told us in 2013.
A matter of survival
Joe Biden’s climate plan, highlighted last week during the Democratic National Convention, is a potpourri of ambitious ideas designed to appease the progressive wing of the party while not completely alienating the moderate Republicans. There is no ban on fossil fuel subsidies, for example, nor on fracking to extract oil and gas from rock by injecting high- pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals.
Nonetheless, it is a plan and something to build on, compared with the alternative of more denial, drilling and auto emission rollbacks.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, though, there is a rising wave of money making its way toward sustainable investments — $ 1 trillion in sustainable funds, according to the financial service UBS.
That money will be aimed at companies trying to cut their carbon footprints and seeking solutions such as electric vehicles and energy efficient buildings. The idea of doing good and making profit at the same time is catching like a, uh, wildfire.
Last week was the second anniversary of Greta Thunberg’s Friday school strikes to promote fighting climate change. Most of the world’s governments remain “in a state of denial,” she co- wrote in a column in The Guardian.
That denial is real. And with it comes apathy, which is probably more dangerous. The climate debate will be an important part of the coming election. Even more so afterward, no matter who wins. The time to solve it has long passed. It’s a matter of survival now. Our new climate reality is here, and it’s getting worse.