Despite the heat, climate change policy gets the cold shoulder

It was the hottest summer ever measured. Probably the hottest in 120,000 years. All those broken records, and the heat trajectory, they’re more than enough to chill your spine. But the response has been a different kind of chill — a resounding, ‘meh.’

Phoenix, Arizona has been broiling under highs above 100 degrees Fahrenheit for over 100 days in a row. “When will the streak of 100-degree days in Phoenix end?” pleaded local media headlines this week. The city is breaking the records it set just last year and its average temperature across June, July and August was a blistering 99 Fahrenheit (37.2 C).

It bears remembering that Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the U.S. And the capital of a battleground state in the upcoming election. But climate impacts slid through the presidential debate with the barest of mention — just one passing comment from Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at the very end of 90 minutes.

It’s not as if the issue hadn’t been teed up. Just one day before, the Harris-Walz campaign had to cancel a rally in another swing state, a scheduled event in Reno, Nevada. The Davis wildfire was raging nearby, triggering an evacuation notice for a large portion of south Reno. Instead of the rally, Tim Walz went and thanked volunteers at a campaign field office that’s been converted into a wildfire donation depot.

The following day’s debate itself was emblematic of the refusal to engage with climate change, even on the heels of the hottest summer on record. The moderators squeezed in one question on the topic at the very last moment. They gave the candidates “one minute for you each.”

Donald Trump didn’t say anything about climate change, instead launching into a crazed rant about Chinese cars (and something unintelligible about the mayor of Moscow’s wife).

Kamala Harris did finally utter the words “climate change,” citing its impacts on homes: People are losing their homes, others are having insurance denied or premiums jacked up. She went on to celebrate the Biden administration’s historic investments in clean energy… “while we have also increased domestic gas production.”

We’ll boost clean energy and fossil fuels — that’s the pitch from the only presidential candidate who promises to address climate change at all. And, while that last question was the first time climate change came up, it wasn’t the first time that night Harris had felt the need to fortify her fossil bona fides. Earlier, she had assured voters she is a reliable supporter of fracking. And, while she’s been vice president, the U.S. had “the largest increase in domestic oil production in history,”

The two options for U.S. president are not remotely equivalent. At his rallies, Trump vows to scrap investments in clean energy and eliminate climate regulations. He rants about wind farms causing cancer, blasts electrification (“a transition to hell”) and rails against “the green new hoax.” Compared to the Democrats, another Trump administration could spew an additional four billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the best estimate out there. 

But even on the heels of the hottest summer ever measured, the most climatey candidate spent more time assuring voters she is a reliable supporter of fracking and oil production than tackling the fossil fuels driving up the heat. Two of the top journalists in the U.S., acting as moderators, tacked the issue onto the dying end of an hour and half debate, almost as an afterthought. 

“Tuesday's debate was a disappointing illustration of ignorance about the stakes and science of climate change,” summarized Emily Atkin in Heated. “There’s a reason why neither candidate’s policies would effectively prevent catastrophic warming of over 1.5 degrees Celsius, and it has nothing to do with whether it’s technologically feasible. Indeed, it has everything to do with the failures of our most powerful political communicators — failures that were put squarely on display Tuesday night.”

The big shrug is just as evident north of the border. 

“The ass is completely out of that issue, as a public issue,” said pollster David Herle on an end-of-August podcast. Herle, as many of you will know, is a long-time Liberal pollster and strategist. He’s both deeply grounded in politics and personally gripped by the importance of climate change. “Further reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change lost to everything I paired it against,” Herle says of his latest public opinion research.  

Other polling shows that more Canadians are feeling the impacts — more than one in three Canadians now say they have been hit directly by forest fires, heat waves or floods, up from 25 per cent one year ago. Large majorities agree that fires and extreme heat are on the rise. But the percentage who say they’re worried may actually have declined (63 per cent this summer compared with 67 per cent one year ago).

And there’s been a steady decline in prioritization. Even though concern about inflation has declined somewhat, climate change has not rebounded as a public priority, according to the Angus Reid Institute. In fact, it is now matched by immigration, an issue that has jumped in priority over the past two years.

Canadian politicians certainly seem to think the ass is out of the issue. Even those still willing to boost clean energy are not so keen on the tougher task of cutting fossil fuel pollution. Just in the past week, both federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and B.C. Premier David Eby soured on consumer carbon pricing. Both of them adopted versions of Pierre Poilievre’s script. After five years supporting the carbon tax and rebate program, Singh now condemns the “burden” on working people, completely ignoring the rebate side of the ledger. 

Out on the West Coast, with an election looming, the Conservative Party of British Columbia leader was quick to capitalize. In the party’s press release, “John Rustad thanks Jagmeet Singh for supporting plan to axe the carbon tax.” Rustad’s party has been surging in the polls and Eby’s support for B.C.’s carbon pricing program didn’t last the day. The premier blamed “decisions in Ottawa” for politicizing the carbon tax and declared that if the federal backstop is removed, the provincial NDP would “remove the carbon tax for everyday British Columbians, for the farmers, for the truckers, for the average British Columbian.”

Politics has never been aligned with climate reality but it is now wildly out of whack.

The backpedalling on climate policy and boosterism for fossil fuels comes just days after NASA and other scientific agencies announced that it was the hottest boreal summer since modern record-keeping began. That’s especially worrying because summer 2023 was a dramatic jump upwards in temperature and 2024 broke those records. 

We’d expect to break records as climate change worsens, but not consistently month after month after month. And August was the 15th month in a row of record-breaking monthly temperatures, according to NASA. 

We would also expect a general heating trend, when averaged across the whole Earth, with occasional spikes and a return to trend. Not dramatic leaps in temperature that persist. But that’s what’s happened.

“The warming of the past two years… is well above anything seen in years prior, including strong El Niño years,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Even scientists immersed in climate data admit they are “surprised” by what’s going on. "We still lack a good explanation for what drove the exceptional warmth the world saw in 2023 and 2024,” writes Zeke Hausfather “With temperatures remaining elevated into September 2024, it’s looking increasingly less likely that last year’s elevated temperatures were a mostly transient phenomenon. Rather, some combination of forcings or changes in feedbacks may be driving higher global temperatures going forward."

Europe’s climate agency, Copernicus, published a striking data visualization showing how anomalous the last couple of summers have been.

Copernicus’ chart shows anomalies compared to recent decades. But, for those of you keeping score at home, August was 1.51 C above the pre-industrial level. It was the 13th month since July 2023 that the world exceeded that totemic 1.5 figure.

“During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

“This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record. The temperature-related extreme events witnessed this summer will only become more intense, with more devastating consequences for people and the planet unless we take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."