Thoughts Upon Watching Hurricane News on the Weather Channel (See also text, below, which is the “Description” of this YouTube video. The video and the description are very different ways of weaving together this picture of the challenges we face — including the political — regarding this (what’s been called the) “greatest challenge humankind has ever faced.”)
Each Extreme Weather Event is part of a much larger picture — of “climate change” — that shows us the most serious challenge human civilization has ever faced.
“Weather” now illustrates a reality that regularly generates big Headlines — like the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Helene.
“Weather” shows people a dynamic that threatens to inflict much destruction on the generations to come.
It seems vital to educate the American people to that reality.
But this is an issue on which the public must be educated, especially in view of the powerful segment of the American public that currently supports a political party that consistently blocks all efforts to deal responsibly with Climate Change.
You’d think that Republican voters who love their grandchildren — as many Republicans do — would feel compelled to reject a Republican Party that does the bidding of the fossil fuel industry to maximize their profits at a likely cost of great suffering of the human generations to come.
You’d think they’d insist that the government take action to protect those grandchildren.
But they do not.
Maybe education can address that contradiction. Maybe people can be taught to understand what things like Hurricane Helene are revealing about the challenge we’re facing.
One could imagine the Weather Channel doing that. But, as my wife has observed, the Weather Channel seems studiously to avoid mentioning this big Elephant in the Room, this fundamentally important part of the “Weather” picture.
Not once was climate change mentio9ned in a very long — and quite impressive — interview of Florida Governor Ron de Santis as Hurricane Helene approached Florida’s Big Bend. De Santis is the guy who has forbidden anyone in state office to even mention climate change. And nothing is said about why this bit of “Weather” is making the weather the main headline.
Presumably, the Channel is maximizing profit by staying politically neutral, not bothering anyone. (Like Republican climate-deniers would be “bothered” and would become hostile if they kept announcing this truth— crucial to the human future.
If we knew nothing more about the Republican Party than what it has done with respect to our Climate Challenge, that should be more than enough to reject it.
The brokenness of that Party is matched by a corporate system that gives us powerful actors who will play it safe for their profits, even if that means not mentioning the danger signals we should be paying serious attention to. And so the Weather Channel is content to let us drift toward greater catastrophe by staying on everyone’s “good side,” even though one of those sides is seriously threatening everything we hold dear.
So telling the truth means would mean interpreting for people the danger signals that we should attend to if we’re to head off greater disaster. Which means taking on the Party that lies.
Which our corporations would not do. Too bad our economy generates corporations that would put their financial interest ahead of the clear public good.
Our corporate system would play it politically safe, which means not mentioning the danger signals we should attend to if we’re to head off greater disaster than the immediate monster hurricane coming down upon us.
With such destructive powers in the political and economic spheres operating to disable us from dealing with this crisis of “Weather,” we should be asking: Is there a way that the Forces of Responsible Climate Action could get big majorities to support the pro-Democracy Party for representing their concerns.
(Could a better “educated” public make Climate Change as electorally useful as the post-Dobbs abortion issue apparently has been).