Vouching for public education on the hottest days ever

Big week for governors, sweating, and schools

Welcome to a Thursday edition of Progress Report.

Here in New York City, we experience all four seasons, quite often at their most extreme. In summer, that means at least a heat wave or two that seem to boil the sky, turn blacktop into lava, and, when paired with humidity, make walking more than a few blocks feel like wading through heavy air.

We’re experiencing one of those miserable heat waves right now, and while not every stretch like this can be blamed on climate change, this one is undoubtedly a product of the punishment that humanity continued to dole out against the earth.

The planet has just experienced two of the hottest days in recorded history, a sentence that should be more than enough to terrify people into cheering on a massive global effort to mitigate the worst consequences of the apocalypse to come. Unfortunately, no matter how many weather catastrophes unleash unprecedented chaos and damage, that just isn’t the case.

Republicans and dark money from oil companies and other mass polluters have successfully politicized the very existence of climate change, to the point that in a poll conducted earlier this year, only 23% of GOP voters considered it a major threat. That’s the same number as it was in 2013, suggesting that a decade of weather-driven carnage never happened. Even Democrats are falling a bit behind; while there was a big jump between 2013’s 58% and today’s 78%, the number was as high as 84% back in 2019.

Worse, only 37% of Americans think that dealing with climate change should be a top priority, and the issue ranked as 17th most urgent among the 21 presented to voters polled.

Those are dismal numbers, but perhaps not surprising. Look at the collapse in concern about the Covid-19 pandemic even as new variants were killing thousands and thousands of Americans per day. It was a global plague! But for people who didn’t see friends and loved ones die, simple masks became an inconvenience once the first vaccine shot became available to the public.

via Pew

The human brain was not built to process indefinite extinction-level threats. Politically, people don’t tend to be willing to inconvenience themselves to any major degree for the good of something they cannot see, hear, or touch. Stopping those future climate disasters produced by computer simulations is sadly not salient when compared to pressing personal concerns. Natural disasters have already happened, and frequency numbers don’t pack much of a punch.

The fact that it is absolutely miserable outside right now may actually be the best news possible for environmentalists looking to try something new during this heat wave. That the air has been unbreathable is a perverse gift as well. If there’s going to be a quick attitude shift toward the urgency of climate action, it’s almost certainly going to have to take the route of appealing to self-interest.

Sweating after walking just a few blocks absolutely sucks, and even I’ll admit to actively dreading a summer of that far more than a potentially bad hurricane this fall. For people who treasure regular access to nature, the prospect of seeing a local river or lake totally dried up and unusable is a nightmare. These are the grievances that people can grasp and seek to prevent.

Alright, now let’s get to a night of important stories, gutsy uses of power, and chaos in corn town.

I don’t take advertisements or sell readers’ emails to campaigns or organizations (which is very lucrative to do!) so that Progress Report can remain independent. With your help, it can remain sustainable and ongoing. Thank you to everyone who pitches in, it truly is invaluable.

---

---

Tonight has a pretty solid run of good news, including from places where there hasn’t been much joy to be found in quite a while.