![Wildfire in Tuscany]()
A
helicopter drops water over a wildfire raging near the city of
Massarosa in the Tuscany region of Italy © Federico Scoppa/AFP via Getty
Images In Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road,
ash falls continually from a sky darkened by nuclear winter. Last week,
ash fell for three days into the pool of the Tuscan house I’d rented
with American friends from London as part of a long delayed
post-pandemic holiday — that unfortunately coincided with a record
European heatwave and wildfires near our rental. With temperatures
hovering around 40C and enough smoke to necessitate masks, it was time
to cut the vacation short. Is
this the future of holiday making amid climate change? Quite possibly.
One could argue that Italy in late summer is a bad idea. But we wouldn’t
have fared any better in California, where heat-induced fires also
raged, or in China, where thousands were displaced by flash floods, or
even back home in New York, where city officials told citizens to unplug
appliances and warned against blasting the air-conditioning in order to
prevent the overwhelmed utility grid from collapsing. Police in my
hometown, like many in the US, are bracing for more violent crime, which
correlates with heatwaves. Both
temperatures and tempers flared during my brief holiday, and not only
because our host insisted on no air-con — “You are just fuelling Putin’s
war,” he said, which is true enough. My ex-pat friends were furious
about the recent Supreme Court decision that curbed the Environmental
Protection Agency’s ability to enforce clean energy and environmental
safety rules. The consensus in our group was that West Virginia senator
Joe Manchin, despite his recent last-minute compromises on climate
spending, should be forced to vacation in Death Valley for a week with
nothing but one of those tiny handheld fans. Climate
change is of course no laughing matter. If America can’t make
significant progress on the issue, I suspect that it will be for the
Biden administration what the financial crisis was for the Obama
administration — the policy failure that creates a negative domino
effect for years to come. Barack Obama entered office with ambitions to
fix everything from the American healthcare system to income inequality.
But the sense that his administration had failed to bail out homeowners
during the subprime crisis, as the largest banks grew bigger and
richer, created a sense of disenchantment (particularly among the labour
left) that ultimately crippled his ability to do much else. Certainly, Manchin’s recent capitulation on the White House spending bill is a win for the Biden administration. (In my column today,
I explore the economic ramifications of this, as well as the Chips
bill). But the president is fighting against other priorities and
headwinds. Consider, for example, how the current energy crisis has
pushed the US back into relation with the Saudi government. While the
Biden administration has reaffirmed an alliance, it hasn’t yet got any
particular commitments on oil. It will be tough for the US to position
its foreign policy as being based on “values” — particularly in
comparison to China — when Biden is meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman, whose government is responsible for any number of human
rights atrocities. One
can argue, of course, that endeavouring to stabilise global energy
markets amid the war in Ukraine necessitates such compromise. But even
if the Saudis manage to pump more oil in the short term, their oil
output is near its ceiling. In fact, they are themselves importing more
Russian fuel oil for power generation. Putin has the leverage; the only
way to decrease it is to move as quickly as possible to a clean energy
future. It’s
a circular conundrum that makes one wonder where we might find high
ground or cool temperatures. Certainly not in the south and the west of
the US, where red states including Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Missouri
are battling intense heat and drought that will probably curb production
of cash crops such as corn and soyabeans. In turn, this will only push
food inflation higher, and add fuel to the fire (pardon the pun) of all
the issues I’ve laid out above. |