By Barry Sheppard
The recent highly lethal flash flood in Texas, where a river rose 26 feet in 45 minutes, was another example occurring throughout the world of increasing major disasters, including floods, droughts, fires, heat waves and more, due to climate change resulting from global heating.
It was also an example of the lack of preparedness throughout the world to mitigate these disasters.
In 1981, James Hansen, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Institute, postulated that the known rise in global temperatures of some .5-.7 degrees Celsius in the century before was due to the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. He had studied the atmosphere of Venus, and applied his findings to the Earth’s atmosphere.
Hansen also presented his conclusions to Congress in 1988 that the rise in such gases, especially carbon dioxide, would further increase global temperature. He warned that this would have increasing effects on world climate (that we have seen since) unless this was countered.
Congress paid no attention.
Hansen became an activist on the issue.
While he represented a small minority at first, as the effects of global warming became more apparent, his explanation has become widely accepted by scientists.
So the facts are known, and the predictions dire, as global temperature is on the cusp of rising above 1.5 degrees and will continue to rise even if all burning of fossil fuels were to stop now, as greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere continue to result in further heating. What is happening is that global warming is accelerating as more greenhouse gases, primarily Carbon dioxide, but also methane, are pumped into the atmosphere by the extraction and burning fossil fuels.
If the science is known, and the knowledge that global warming will eventually mean the end of civilization, and possibly of humanity itself and many other life forms, why hasn’t world humanity done anything like what is required to stop this, first of all by rapidly stopping the production and burning of fossil fuels, the main culprit?
The answer is that the capitalist system, that now dominates the world, cannot do it. The first steps have to be taken by the rich countries, historically the main producers of carbon dioxide and methane, not by the poor countries that can least afford to, but who suffer most from its effects.
But within the rich countries capitalist competition prevents this from happening. If any large bloc of capitalist industries would begin to do so on their own, that would mean costs for them would increase and their competitors would crush them. It would take planning of the economy to overcome capitalist competition, something that is an anathema to capitalism.
Also, there would have to be international cooperation of all countries to limit and eliminate greenhouse gases, because the atmosphere covers the whole world, and the entire history of capitalism has been of international competition, often very sharp, and even leading to wars. Obviously, capitalism cannot do this.
Only the overthrow of capitalism, and the building of a cooperative society and world where human needs are the priority not profit, is necessary. That system is socialism, eco-socialism.
The present world is far from that. We can reasonably hope that as the increasing catastrophes of global warming happen, understanding that capitalism is the cause, and the need for socialism will be increasing, especially for the working class, the only class whose objective interests lie in socialism. The other workings of capitalism, explained by Marx, and its wars, that impact working people most of all, will also play an important part.
The fight for anti-capitalist reforms of the cause of global warming and immediate issues like mitigation of what we see already see happening, are what we can do now, while the need for cooperation and the need for planning in a cooperative society is explained.
Concerning global warming, there will be struggles to fight its disastrous effects like the Texas flooding. Part of this is to raise awareness of the need to take immediate measures to mitigate the effects of global warming. Capitalists don’t want to allocate the funds to do that, and will have to be forced to do so by mass movements.
The deadly flash food in Texas shows that better understanding of weather and early warnings, rapid measurement of water levels, and preventative steps taken in flood prone areas, and more allotment of resources to do all this is necessary.
Similar steps have to be taken to protect populations in drought prone areas. Forest management must be better understood and implemented to reduce the dangers of wildfires.
Heat waves that can be deadly, as we have seen in countries like Bangladesh, require greatly increased cooling measures to protect the population.
The science and engineering of mitigating measures has to be stepped up.
It is up to the rich countries to do what needs to be done, augmented by good scientists that exist in the rest of the world.
The U.S. should be taking the lead, but it isn’t. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have increased fossil fuel production and burning, and have neglected to take adequate mitigating steps. Biden gave lip service to opposing global warming and doing nothing, while Trump openly does not and denies there even is such a thing as climate change.
The Trump administration and its Big Beautiful Bill, and further proposed measures, are making things worse.
An article in the July 14 New York Times is titled, “Cuts Endanger U.S. Response to Calamities.”
“In an effort to shrink the federal government, President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps that are diluting the country’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather events, disaster experts say,” the article begins.
“Staff reductions, budget cuts and other changes made by the administration since January have already created holes at the National Weather Service, which forecasts and warns of dangerous weather.”
Nearly half of the Service’s 122 forecast offices had lost at least 20 percent of their staff as of April. Thirty offices were lacking their most experienced official, known as the meteorologist-in charge, as of May, the article says.
“Mr. Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year would close laboratories run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] that research the ways a warming planet is changing weather, among other things. That work is essential to more accurately predict life-threatening hazards. Among the shuttered labs would be one in Miami that sends teams of ‘hurricane hunters’ that fly into storms to collect data. The proposed budget would also make major cuts to a federal program that uses river gauges to predict floods.”
Also cut would be NOAA’s entire scientific research division, one of the world’s premier weather and climate research centers creating new weather forecasting technologies. Ten NOAA laboratories across the country are slated to be closed, including the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, the article says.
“The president also envisions a dramatically scaled-down Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] that would shift the costs of disaster response and recovery from the federal government to the states. The administration has already revoked $3.6 billion in grants from FEMA to hundreds of communities around the country, which were used to help areas protect against hurricanes, wildfires and other catastrophes. About 16 percent of the agency’s staff member have left since January, including senior leaders with decades of experience, and another 20 percent are expected to be gone by the end of the year.”
At the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Trump would cut half the funding for earth science and terminate satellites that have been collecting data on the atmosphere, ocean, land and ice for more than two decades, the article says.
There are many more details about Trump’s attacks in the long article.
Trump’s budget will be endorsed by the Republicans who have a majority in Congress.
Meanwhile, the Democrats fail to say what they will reverse should they form the next administration. As they do on all of Trump’s decrees, and their own legislation, the massive tax cuts for the rich at workers’ expense, and most everything else will remain in place.
Trump hopes that his whirlwind of decrees and his Big Beautiful Bill will become established facts — faits accomplis — that will be hard to reverse even if Democrats wanted to, which they show no appetite for.
We need a movement independent of the capitalist parties that places no hope in them.
