The climate crisis is not burning hot enough in the political agenda

Israel is on the verge of an election, in the US midterm elections are expected, in Britain elections are on the agenda as well as in Italy, and in many developing countries there is political instability.

Tali Goldstein

19/07/2022

Tuesday, 19 July, 2022, 10:49 Updated: 11:12

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In the video: Heat wave in Europe (Photo: Reuters)

The extreme heat wave in Western Europe continues and is even expected to encrypt.

Britain is expecting today (Tuesday) the hottest day ever, and experts warn that parts of France will face a "heat apocalypse".

Yesterday the Netherlands recorded the hottest day so far this year, and temperatures today are expected to be above 39 degrees Celsius in the south and center of the country.

Belgium and Germany are also set to record temperatures of about 40 degrees Celsius in the coming days.

The death toll now stands at about a thousand people, mostly in Spain and Portugal who are also suffering from deadly fires, but are expected to rise as long as the extreme heat does not break.

This weekend, a heat relief is likely to be expected - an optimistic and happy forecast by all accounts.

The problem is that happy optimistic forecasts usually do not star in newspaper headlines, web headlines and the opening of new editions.

Optimistic and happy predictions are quickly forgotten - and even deliberately pushed aside at first to make way for a shocking murder, an embarrassing scandal of public figures, a juicy criminal trial - which is trendy and clicky at the moment - and politicians know it.

Heat wave, UK (Photo: GettyImages)

Studies already show that high temperature records are breaking this year at a much faster rate compared to low temperature records, meaning that the probability of heat waves is much higher compared to cold waves around the world.

In the United States by July 16, 92 high-temperature records were broken, compared with just five records of extremely low temperatures.

And in total, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 188 all-time heat records have been broken so far in 2022 compared to 18 cold records.

Extreme heat waves are also expected to multiply, intensify and last for longer periods of time due to global warming.

"This is what happens when the earth warms, mainly due to greenhouse gas emissions. This is the world we live in now," Gabriel Wacky, a climate scientist at Princeton University, told CNN.

Of course, the effects of global warming are not limited to heat waves.

The summer of 2021 for example has witnessed deadly storms and floods around the world, but the heat waves will be much more frequent and powerful.

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Heat wave, Spain (Photo: Reuters)

According to a study from 2021, the rise in temperatures around the Earth in the next 50 years will be sharper than it has been in the last 6,000 years.

According to the study, by 2070, extremely hot areas like the Sahara Desert, which currently cover less than 1% of the globe, will cover about one-fifth (19%) of the total area, potentially putting one in three people outside the "temperature niches" , Climatic living areas where humans have thrived for thousands of years.

Another study, published in 2017 in the journal Science Advances, predicted that by 2100 global temperatures would rise to such a high point that in some regions, including parts of India and eastern China, even going out for a few hours would "end in death, even of the healthiest and most powerful people."

And for those who want to take comfort in the fact that in general, this is now Western-Northern Europe or the United States - rich, developed and bottom line places, economically able to deal with extreme heat - the much bigger and more threatening problem facing the developed part of the world is millions of refugees due to the heat They will no longer be able to continue living in their homeland and will be knocked on the borders of Western Europe in the hope of finding refuge.

Preliminary studies on the extent of expected global climate migration have estimated the number of displaced persons at 50-300 million by 2050.

Extreme hot wave in the world, June 20, 2022 (Photo: Walla !, system).

According to a World Bank report from April 2021, about 55% of the world's population - 4.2 billion people - currently live in cities. This trend is expected to grow to 67% by 2050 due to the climate crisis, according to the report.

Some cities will not be able to withstand the flow of immigrants.

People will congregate in slums without electricity and water, where they will be more exposed to natural disasters, weather damage and the like - and will also be a fertile ground for violence, extremism, social and political instability and chaos.

Heat wave, UK (Photo: GettyImages)

Faced with the piling up data, leaders around the world are repeatedly committing to ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but are not meeting them.

Moreover, in the United States, just last month when extreme heat was already prevailing in parts of the country, the Supreme Court significantly curtailed the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor the energy sector extensively and implement sweeping policies necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead, the court allowed for a very narrow regulation that could lead to a reduction in emissions at only a few power plants - a decision that would make it very difficult for President Joe Biden to meet the target he set of 50% emissions cuts by 2030.

Even European leaders now understand that due to global warming and the expected heat waves, energy consumption in their countries will only go up instead of falling.

In addition to the high use of polluting gas (as well as oil, still) during the winter season, their citizens will also be forced to turn on greenhouse gas-emitting and polluting air conditioners for significant periods of time during the summer season.

What will happen to the commitments to zero emissions?

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A recent New York Times / Siena College poll found that only 1% of American voters believe that the climate crisis is the most important issue facing the state - with a significant lag behind inflation, the economy, and so on.

Even among voters under the age of 30, only 3% said that this is the most important issue in the election.

A survey of attitudes among the Israeli public towards the climate crisis conducted as part of the Eli Horowitz Conference on Economics and Society in December 2020, showed similar results: only 30% -33% of Israelis take environmental considerations into account when voting.

The public around the world is exhausted from the daily struggle for the cost of living, from two years of plague, unprecedented social polarization and geopolitical changes that many thought would not sleep in the 21st century.

"People also tend to think of the climate as tomorrow's problem," Enosha Narianan, a Greenpeace U.S. campaign manager, told The New York Times. That the small citizen is incapable of him - is at the end of the day the main reason why they are elected.The leaders are the ones who must teach the citizens to see the climate crisis as an immediate as well as long-term problem, through a policy compatible and compliant with this policy.Span

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez This week he visited the arena of one of the many fires that have been raging in the country in recent days. "The climate crisis is killing us" he concluded. Now only the eternal question remains:

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