I am haunted by the overwhelming complexity of the climate crisis and the frightening necessity of relying on homo-sapiens to respond to the disaster in time and with the necessary effort required for the scale of the problem. Our species has not been a good caretaker of the earth, and there are way too many of us consuming and breeding; creating a social movement that cares enough seems impossible.
I want to remain hopeful, that we will throw everything we possibly can at this looming disaster and, that we have the wisdom and the courage to do so. But I don’t believe that we will even though we have the technology to get rolling. We seem to be paralyzed much like a deer in the headlights.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently stated that governments must reduce current greenhouse gas emissions by half in 2030 and be completely weaned off of fossil fuels by 2050 to avoid catastrophe. Guess what? That is the best case scenario to avoid the apocalypse.
We face some serious headwinds in the climate fight than we did just two years ago when Donald Trump “ won” the election with the help of Vladimir Putin. These two are the most dangerous people on the planet, and they have the support of small scale despots like Bolsonaro, MBS, and Duarte. All of them are derailing the fight against climate change. We also have a Supreme Court that is no friend to the environment when we need one.
So given this knowledge that is in my head all the time, I am focused on the candidates in the Democratic Primary and how much they grasp the climate issue. Currently, I have a favored candidate among many remarkable candidates that Democrats can choose from this election cycle. He is a millennial, and this boomer thinks he is the climate candidate that we have waited for. Millenials have the most skin in the climate fight. They should be in charge. His name is Pete Buttigieg, and he is a small town mayor from Indiana.
A glimpse into Pete’s soul. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, serving as a lieutenant with the US Navy Reserve, stands above the Afghanistan capital of Kabul.Kate Yoder of Grist writes on the longshot candidate:
The whole thought experiment makes more sense once you know that the 37-year-old Buttigieg is running for president. Because odds are you didn’t. Buttigieg is one of many underdogs vying for the 2020 Democratic nomination, and the youngest one to boot. His campaign is underpinned by the concern that young people today will likely be stuck with the problems created by older generations, especially climate change. Who better to fix them than a millennial like Buttigieg — a Navy vet and Rhodes Scholar — who understands what’s at stake?
snip
Two big floods hit South Bend in the past couple of years — floods that “should happen once in a lifetime, if that,” Buttigieg told me. So when he thinks about climate change, he remembers a family on the porch of their flooded house in South Bend, the night before the first day of school. “The family’s trying to figure out how to cope with being displaced because the flood has made their house unlivable,” he said.
As Indiana warms, research shows, more devastating rains are in store. That’s a problem for South Bend, a city whose old stormwater system wasn’t designed to handle these deluges, and where heavy rains keep sending sewage into the St. Joseph River.
Buttigieg had inherited an expensive stormwater infrastructure plan that the city couldn’t afford. So he prioritized “finding a cost-saving and environmentally-friendly solution to the stormwater problem,” said Therese Dorau, director of South Bend’s sustainability office. In 2017, he proposed a greener plan to manage floods with permeable concrete, rain gardens, and tree plantings — and in the process, saved hundreds of millions of dollars, Dorau said.
xThank you for taking the #NoFossilFuelMoney pledge, rejecting contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industry and prioritizing the health of our families, climate, and democracy over fossil fuel industry profits.https://t.co/plu8qLI6PB
— Oil Change U.S. (@OilChangeUS) March 27, 2019“I’m thinking about what the world’s going to look like in 2054, when I get to the current age of the current president,” Buttigieg, who if elected would become the youngest president ever, said. “And if we don’t act aggressively and immediately on climate, it’s not going to be a pretty picture.”
Explaining that the U.S. must rapidly curb carbon emissions, Buttigieg said “the bottom line is, scientifically, the right year to do that was yesterday.”
“We’ve got to do this,” he added. “This time table isn’t being set in Congress; it’s being set by reality.”
snip
xDid you know that @PeteButtigieg led an effort to store archives of EPA data when there was a concern that the administration was hiding climate change facts?? Find out more about Mayor Pete’s stance on climate change in the infographic below!#MayorPete2020#peteforamericahttps://t.co/2q36hJhjmz
— Millennials for Pete (@Nextgen4Pete) March 25, 2019In a recent interview with Newsweek , Buttigieg explained that the negative impact of climate change is something mayors like him across the country are already forced to address.
“Right now it is unseasonably warm in South Bend, just 10 days after a polar vortex was starting to come to our community,” the mayor explained. “A year ago something similar happened, the only difference is that there was a lot of snow on the ground. And the consequence was a 500-year flood,” he continued. “That 500-year flood came after what we were told was a 1,000-year rainfall, causing flash floods in the city.”
“To me climate change isn’t something that’s happening over in the Arctic, or in coastal cities or the Pacific islands, it’s also something that’s happening right here in the American Midwest and it’s only going to accelerate,” he warned.
xI love Mayor Pete. One of my favorite photos of him with a member of my wheelchair basketball team during an organized game. pic.twitter.com/7m5s99FweZ
— Misty “Mimi†Piker (@mimi_dawn_piker) March 28, 2019The candidate on the Green New Deal.
x YouTube VideoIf we only had a President that is aware of the human impacts from a warming world combined with detailed mitigation knowledge during a climate crisis to help soften some of the blows we will experience. Just imagine having this man overseeing the climate disasters in Puerto Rico and California instead of Trump.
One more video.
For us, our experience with climate change will be local. This guy understands infrastructure and it’s role in climate mitigation. Mitigation policy is at the top of my list, we shouldn’t have to suffer by inaction.
x xYouTube Video