The scientists’ warning to the US President on the climate crisis was clear: the countries of the world were conducting a huge, dangerous experiment by releasing enormous emissions to warm the planet that threaten to be “harmful from the human perspective”. Some sort of remedial action was needed, they demanded.
That official warning came not to Joe Biden, who is about to sign America’s first-ever major legislation to address the climate crisis, but in a report presented to his predecessor Lyndon Johnson in 1965, a year in which the now 79- year old Biden was still in college.
That it has taken nearly six decades for the US to address global warming in any significant way, despite being responsible for a quarter of all emissions that have warmed the planet during modern civilization, points to a protracted climate war. Damaging misinformation from the fossil fuel industry, cynicism and botched political maneuvers have thwarted any action to avert catastrophic heat waves, floods, droughts and wildfires.
If on Friday, as expected, the House of Representatives approves the landmark $370 billion in climate spending being negotiated in the US Senate and sends Biden to sign it, it will be a turning point in a saga measurable in entire careers.
Al Gore was a newly minted 33-year-old congressman from Tennessee when he organized an obscure 1981 hearing with fellow lawmakers to hear evidence on the greenhouse effect from Roger Revelle, his former Harvard professor and one of the scientists Johnson had 16 years earlier before one warned of the impending climate catastrophe.
Gore, now 74, is a former US Vice President and longtime climate advocate whose increasingly urgent warnings on the issue earned him the Nobel Peace Prize when Greta Thunberg was barely four. “I never thought I would end up dedicating my life to this,” Gore said.
Al Gore has spoken out on the effects of global warming for 40 years. “I never thought that I would end up dedicating my life to this,” he said. Photo: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images“I thought, naively in hindsight, that we could move much faster if the facts were so clearly laid out. I did not expect the fossil fuel industry to spend billions of dollars on an industrial-scale program of lies and deception to prevent politicians from acting rationally. But here we are, we finally crossed that threshold.”
Gore sees the bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, as a “key turning point in our fight against the climate crisis” that will accelerate the deployment of renewable energies like wind and solar and push fossil fuels toward oblivion.
Many current Democratic lawmakers, who narrowly passed the law through the Senate, also felt the weight of the moment, as many wore the warming stripe colors that show the global warming trend. Some broke down in tears as legislation squeaked home on Sunday.
“We’ve fought for this for decades, now I can look my kids in the eye and say we’re really doing something about the climate,” said Brian Schatz, a Hawaii senator and one of the tears. “The Senate was where climate legislation died, and now it’s where the largest climate action ever taken by a government has come.”
The list of failures so far is long. Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House roof, only for Ronald Reagan to tear them down. Bill Clinton attempted a new tax on pollutants only for a sharp industry backlash to see the effort fail. The US declined to join the 1997 Kyoto climate agreement under the presidency of George W. Bush, and then botched climate legislation in 2009, with Barack Obama in the White House, despite strong Democratic majorities in Congress.
Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, torched most of the modest measures taken to curb planet-heating gases and wore a miner’s helmet. “I had no doubt that we would make it, but there were times when the battle got tougher than I thought, like when Trump got elected,” Gore said.
Climate change has inflicted increasingly serious wounds on Americans as their politicians have faltered or disguised themselves. Enormous wildfires are now a year-round threat to California, with the western US suffering what may be its worst drought in 12 centuries. Extreme rains are now routinely drowning basements in New York, in Appalachian towns, and in casinos in Las Vegas. The poorest suffer the worst from the sweltering heat waves and persistent 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 the chatter and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is there,” and yet it seemed the escalating subsequent alerts make little difference. Just before a deal was negotiated in the Senate, climate scientist Drew Shindell said that he “wants to shout” about the lack of action and that “I keep asking myself what the point of producing all that science is,” if only it could is ignored.
Activists attend a rally and march on Earth Day in Washington DC. Photo: Michael Reynolds/EPAMuch of the blame for this has been placed on the fossil fuel industry, which for decades has known the disastrous consequences of its business model only to fund a vast network of operations that have withheld this information and attempted to sow public doubt about the science .
“These forces have been far more active and effective in the United States than in other countries,” said Naomi Oreskes, an American historian of science who has written about the industry’s misinformation on the climate crisis.
“For more than 20 years, American public opinion has been heavily influenced by the ‘mongers of the doubt,’ who sold disinformation to make people believe that climate change science was much more uncertain than it actually was.”
Industry lobbying and generous donations have ensured that the Republican Party has responded almost entirely to the demands of the big oil and gas companies. As recently as 2008, a Republican running for president, John McCain, had a recognizable climate plan, but the issue is now partisan heretical, despite growing concerns by all Americans, including Republican voters, about climate-related disasters.
The misinformation strategy “worked even better than its creators imagined,” Oreskes said, noting that every single Republican senator voted against the Inflation Reduction Act. Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate leader, called the bill “Green New Deal nonsense” inconsistent with Americans’ priorities, even as much of his home state of Kentucky was submerged after the worst flooding on record, killing dozens and flooded entire cities.
Continued staunch Republican opposition to any meaningful climate action means the climate wars in American politics are unlikely to end anytime soon. But climate advocates are hoping that the accelerating pace of renewable energy and electric car adoption will soon become unstoppable, despite any backtracking, when Republicans regain power.
The question will be how much damage will be done to a livable climate in the meantime. The climate law is expected to help cut emissions from the US, the world’s second-biggest carbon polluter, by about 40% this decade, which should spur other countries to do more. Crucial upcoming UN climate talks in Egypt suddenly look more inviting to the American delegation.
“I think that in the previous administration, the rest of the world lost faith in the United States in terms of our commitment to climate,” said Gina McCarthy, Biden’s top climate adviser. “Not only does this restore that confidence in the United States, but it creates a zone of opportunity for other countries to think about.”
But almost every country, including the US, is still not doing fast enough to avert the prospect of catastrophic global warming. The climate wars have helped enrich fossil fuel companies, but they are costing valuable time that the new climate law is not reclaiming.
“It was a solemn and joyful moment when the law was finally passed, but we must not make this a once-in-a-lifetime moment,” Gore said. “The path to net zero (emissions) requires us to move forward and there is still a lot of hard work ahead of us.”