That formal warning was not given to Joe Biden, who is poised to sign America’s first major legislation designed to address the climate crisis, but in a report given to his presidential predecessor Lyndon Johnson in 1965, a year when the now 79-year-old old Biden was still in college. That it has taken nearly six decades for the US to significantly address global warming, despite being responsible for a quarter of all emissions that have warmed the planet during modern civilization, is indicative of a long-running climate war. The fossil fuel industry’s destructive misinformation, cynicism and political maneuvering have blocked any action to prevent catastrophic heat waves, floods, droughts and wildfires. If on Friday, as expected, the House of Representatives approves the landmark $370 billion in climate spending that was broken up in the US Senate and sends it to Biden for signature, it will be a watershed moment in a saga that can be measured in entire careers and lifetimes. Al Gore was a fresh-faced 33-year-old congressman from Tennessee when, in 1981, he organized a dark hearing with other lawmakers to hear evidence on the greenhouse effect from Roger Revell, his former professor at Harvard and one of the scientists he had warn Johnson 16 years in advance of an impending climate catastrophe. Gore is now 74, a former US vice president and veteran climate campaigner whose increasingly urgent warnings on the subject won him the Nobel Peace Prize when Greta Thunberg was just four years old. “I never imagined I would end up devoting my life to this,” Gore said. Al Gore has been speaking out about the effects of global warming for 40 years. “I never imagined I would end up devoting my life to this,” he said. Photo: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images “I thought, naively in retrospect, that when the facts were laid out so clearly we could have moved much faster. I did not expect the fossil fuel industry to spend billions of dollars on an industrial scale program of lies and deception to prevent the body politic from acting rationally. But here we are, we’ve finally crossed that threshold.” Gore sees the bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, as a “critical turning point in our fight to address the climate crisis” that will weigh on the development of renewables such as wind and solar and push fossil fuel inconsistency. Many of today’s Democratic lawmakers, who passed the bill through the Senate, also felt the weight of the moment, with many of them wearing the warmer stripes that point to the global warming trend. Some broke down in tears as the legislation was driven home Sunday. “We’ve been fighting for this for decades, now I can look my kids in the eye and say we’re actually doing something about the climate,” said Brian Schatz, a senator from Hawaii and one of the tearful. “The Senate was where climate bills went to die, and now it’s where the most climate action by any administration ever has been taken.” The list of past failures is long. Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House, only to have them torn down by Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton attempted a new tax on pollutants only for a strong backlash from industry to see the effort die. The US, under George W. Bush, refused to join the 1997 Kyoto climate accords and then, when Barack Obama was in the White House, paralyzed climate legislation in 2009 despite strong Democratic majorities in Congress . Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, burned most of the modest measures in place to limit global warming gases and campaigned wearing a coal miner’s helmet. “I didn’t doubt we would get there, but there were times when the race got tougher than I thought it would be, like when Trump was elected,” Gore said. Climate change has inflicted increasingly serious wounds on Americans as their politicians have faltered or fallen apart. Massive wildfires are now a year-round threat to California, with the US West facing possibly its worst drought in 12 centuries. Extreme rainfall now regularly drowns basements in New York, Appalachian towns and Las Vegas casinos. The worst fare is the worst of the heatwaves and continued air pollution from power plants, cars and trucks. James Hansen, the NASA scientist, told Congress in a landmark hearing in 1988 that “it’s time to stop baptizing so much and say the evidence is strong enough that the greenhouse effect is here” and yet the escalating consequences warnings seemed to make little difference. . Shortly before a Senate deal was brokered, climate scientist Drew Shindell said the lack of action made him “want to scream” and that “I keep wondering what’s the point of producing all the science” if it’s just being ignored. Activists attend an Earth Day rally and march in Washington. Photo: Michael Reynolds/EPA Much of the blame for this has been placed on the fossil fuel industry, which knew for decades about the disastrous consequences of its business model only to fund a vast network of companies that hid this information and tried to sow public doubt about the science. . “These forces have been much more active and effective in the United States than in other countries,” said Naomi Oreskes, an American historian of science who has written about industry disinformation about the climate crisis. “For more than 20 years, American public opinion has been heavily influenced by ‘merchants of doubt,’ who peddled disinformation designed to make people believe that the science about climate change was far more uncertain than it was. what in reality.” Industry lobbying and generous donations have ensured that the Republican party has fallen almost entirely in line with the demands of big oil and gas companies. It wasn’t until 2008 that a Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, had a recognizable climate plan, but the issue is now close to partisan heresy, despite growing concern among all Americans, including Republican voters, about climate change. disasters. The disinformation strategy “worked even more than its instigators imagined,” Oreskes said, noting that every Republican senator voted against the deflationary law. Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate leader, called the bill “Green New Deal nonsense” out of step with Americans’ priorities, even as much of his state, Kentucky, was under water from the worst floods that have been recorded, killing dozens and flooding entire cities. . Continued, staunch opposition to any meaningful climate action by Republicans means the climate wars in American politics aren’t likely to end anytime soon. But climate advocates hope the pace of renewable energy and electric car adoption will soon be unstoppable, regardless of any pushback if Republicans regain power. The question will be how much damage will be done in the meantime to a sustainable climate. The climate bill is expected to help cut US emissions, the world’s second-biggest carbon polluter, by about 40 percent this decade, prompting other countries to do more. Crucial, upcoming UN climate talks in Egypt suddenly seem a more welcoming prospect for the US delegation. “Under the previous administration, I think the rest of the world lost faith in the United States in terms of our climate commitment,” said Gina McCarthy, Biden’s top climate adviser. “This doesn’t just restore that faith in the United States, it creates a zone of opportunity that other countries can start thinking about.” But almost every country, including the US, is still not doing enough, fast enough, to avert the prospect of catastrophic global warming. The climate wars helped enrich fossil fuel companies, but they cost valuable time that the new climate bill does not recover. “It was a celebratory and happy moment when the legislation was finally passed, but we cannot allow it to be a once-in-a-lifetime moment,” Gore said. “The path to net zero (emissions) requires us to move forward and we have a lot of hard work ahead of us.”
