The Heat Jokes Aren't Funny
In search of a more responsible and urgent climate crisis conversation that prompts action
Publisher’s Riff
The most destructive aspect of climate crisis is not so much climate crisis itself. It’s that nothing is being done about it. That we all seem gripped into paralysis by it when the solutions are there and the technology is available to tackle it.
Everyone, even so-called “climate deniers,” know it’s a serious problem (because if it’s “a hoax” then why do they put so much sweat into erasing it?). The lack of urgency and lack of action on climate crisis is the real crisis; it has reached even more alarming levels at a moment when we know that the global community could do something about it.
There is a convergence of resignation and lethargy at play. The visual is this: a flaming asteroid is fast approaching planet Earth, the astronomers are looking right at it, they’re warning us. But, policymakers are standing in front of the White House chilling and grinning in all-White country club fashion, slapping each other on the back about a lame “bipartisan” compromise on infrastructure as if that’s all it takes. The asteroid is set to hit, and governments are, for the most part, out to lunch.
Instead, what we’re getting is a mix of premature self-congratulation from elected officials in press releases and press conferences about how they’re starting something and setting “carbon reduction” “net zero carbon” or “anything-but-100%-clean-energy” targets by a time in the future that will be too damn late to address the immediacy of climate apocalypse we’re seeing now. In the meantime, it’s not really registering in the public discourse how bad this is: that the excessive heat dome vast parts of North America are living and dying through, along with catastrophic flooding in other areas like the Midwest, is all connected to that soft-termed thing people keep calling “climate change.” Part of that is because “mainstream” or corporate media outlets that most people still rely on for key news headlines don’t report on climate crisis, as Media Matters’ researchers Ted Macdonald, Allison Fisher and Evlondo Cooper point out in their “How broadcast TV networks covered climate change in 2020” annual report …
Of course, media networks might counter that “well, we had pandemic going on and just didn’t have the energy to cover climate issues.” But, that didn’t stop them from covering other stuff, including the 2020 election, every tweet Trump pushed out and every time a famous person had something to say about every tweet Trump pushed out. Plus, pandemic was also worsened by climate and environmental racism impacts.
There is also the tendency of local media’s refusal to cover climate and environmental justice issues substantively: even if heat waves are covered endlessly on local outlets, reporters and anchors aren’t mentioning climate crisis. When local weather forecasters and meteorologists give their daily take, it’s usually rattling off days of hot temperatures while occasionally cracking heat jokes with their colleagues on the set.
As Climate Central points out …
Rising temperatures: Adding heat to a system will only make it hotter, and that's exactly what is happening. 2020 was the one of the two warmest years on record globally, and it was ranked the fifth-warmest year here in the U.S.
Wet gets wetter; dry gets drier: As the climate warms, the atmosphere can hold more water, meaning more intense evaporation (drought) and heavier precipitation (flooding).
Stronger Storms: A combination of warmer air and water temperatures supercharge the water cycle, allowing hurricanes to become stronger and cause more damage once onshore.
It means that we and our kids are looking at a rather unlivable future if we keep lounging on the subject. Since this isn’t presenting the kind of social media worthy visuals we’re now accustomed to seeing to elicit a response, we’re now waiting for a major catastrophe or series of catastrophes that are directly linked - irrefutably - to climate crisis to take place. We’re not sure what that event or string of events is yet or what the tipping point will be. The lack of preparation and planning is unfortunate: it’s like the roadway intersection that all the neighbors and local lawmakers know is dangerous due to cars that speed through it - but, no one does anything about it until a random teen on a neighborhood jog gets struck and killed when crossing that same intersection … and then we get the stop lights two years later that should have been there all along (this is a true story, by the way). Why do we have to wait for loss of life before we do anything about events and hazards we know will cause an inevitable loss of life?
Hence, it’s difficult to laugh or chuckle at the typical heat jokes these days. We’re not thinking, for example, about poorer urban communities and households that have limited access to air conditioning during moments like these nor are we considering what droughts could be doing to those same populations. As school districts (and, yes, parents and politicians) are rushing children back into schools, no one is actively thinking, yet, about the lack of air conditioning in old urban classrooms - yet, in 2017, New York City made a pledge, and dedicated dollars, to put an air conditioning unit in every classroom (and they have over 13,000 classrooms citywide to cover). And as violent crime continues to rise, shouldn’t law enforcement and violence prevention initiatives be fighting such trends by implementing environmental and climate-competent stratgies? What will dwindling water supplies caused by drying reservoirs mean for populations that couldn’t afford high water bills to begin with? Will certain parts of the country start rationing? Who has to stay behind in densely populated cities that are burning up from heat island effects? Health, wealth, education and public safety issues that are key to overall quality of life for all of us, but especially for vulnerable low-income to moderately incomed Black and Brown communities, all intersect with climate crisis issues or are made worse by climate crisis. Yet, we continue to ignore the climate crisis conversation at our own peril. For example, these Morning Consult polling numbers on climate crisis urgency should be higher …
Just 50 percent see it as a “critical threat?” And the number of Republicans and Independents who doubt it stirs concern. One problem is that too many climate crisis narratives are built around White middle class stories, and since White middle class families, generally speaking, can financially handle natural disasters, the conversation psyches many into believing its manageable. When calamities do strike, the focus is on the inconveniences suffered by White middle class residential areas, hence driving the assumption that other populations are either not dealing with it or are of no concern. The general ignorance is alarming and dangerous.