The Climate Report Goes Up in Smoke

The Plot Against Climate: Part 2

I hate how often phase 1 of this newsletter has veered into responding to the politics of the moment. One of the initial goals I set myself was to steer clear of that, and to write posts that might still ring true down the line, rather than lashing myself to the news cycle and writing things that stink after three days. “Like it or not,” as Colbert said to his fellow latenight hosts on the Strike Force Five pod, “we make egg salad.”

However! When you write about climate messaging and the feds set about dismantling and destroying climate-related programs, initiatives, research, reports and resources—well, that shifts the storyline rather substantially. As we talked about last time, when it comes to climate, we’re concerned less with the story than with the plot against it. And the plot here is nothing less than the obliteration of anything and everything that Big Daddy Oil wants disappeared. Per The Grist:

Under Trump, climate denial has given way to something even more dangerous: climate erasure.

Everything that’s already been lost in the last six months is horrific enough. But is there any reason to think the wholesale slaughter will just peter out? Quite the opposite.

So. This is still a climate messaging newsletter. But climate research and clean energy are being bombed like they’re hiding an underground nuclear program, which means this is also a wartime newsletter. But that’s not to say it’s exclusively a downer. The thrust of today’s post, I’m pleased to report, can be near-perfectly, chef’s-kissedly captured by The Onion:

DOJ Removes All Mentions Of Justice From Website

“Justice is a discriminatory form of woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our Justice Department,” Bondi said during a press conference, adding that pro-justice policies actively divided Americans, spread misinformation, and distracted from the DOJ’s core mission. “Anyone who says that justice is our department’s strength—or that we should promote dangerous ideals that imply Americans will be treated with dignity or compassion in the eyes of the law—is sadly mistaken.”

“Thanks to Donald Trump, justice is dead,” she added. “And this is just the beginning.”

Love that JUSTICE has been Photoshopped out behind her. The only question now is whether to refer to the DOJ as the DO or simply the D.

For as much as the DOJ is a worthy target for the way it’s been weaponized against itself—not to mention other governmental agencies—what the Onion’s upstanding journalists are targeting here, without so much as saying so, is the disappearance of the legally mandated U.S. national climate assessments at climate.gov and globalchange.gov.

Per This report from the AP:

Legally mandated U.S. national climate assessments seem to have disappeared from the federal websites built to display them … The White House, which was responsible for the assessments, said the information will be housed within NASA to comply with the law, but gave no further details.

Just like that. *Poof.* Gone.

“It’s part of a horrifying big picture. It’s just an appalling whole demolition of science infrastructure.”

—Harvard climate scientist John Holdren, who was President Obama’s science advisor and whose office directed the assessments, said after the 2014 edition he visited governors, mayors and other local officials who told him … the 841-page report … helped them decide whether to raise roads, build seawalls and even move hospital generators from basements to roofs.

Think globally, message locally

When formulating how to communicate this “part of a horrifying big picture,” it could be valuable to dial in on the profoundly negative local impacts coming down the pike.

“This is a government resource … that really is the primary source of information for any city, state or federal agency who’s trying to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate,” said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who has been a volunteer author for several editions of the report.

Last week was Climate Week up in the Pacific Northwest. One session I found particularly insightful was “Turn Anxiety into Action: Cultures of Hope in a Changing Climate”, which had a splendid collection of panelists. Hearing leaders from different faith/cultural backgrounds vibe like they’ve known each other for years was refreshing as hell—as was hearing them chat about how spirituality and religion and climate science reinforce each other (rather than confict).

One of the panelists was Loni Grinnell-Greninger, Vice Chair of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (in Sequim, on the north coast of the Washington peninsula). She had a lot of insightful stuff to say, but what hit me hardest was the fact that rising sea levels are confronting her Tribe with the urgent need to move the facility that tests their seafood for toxins. Meanwhile, she noted, some coastal Tribes, like the Makah, are having to move all their facilities to higher elevations.

Shit is very real. And said real shit is happening everywhere, being felt everywhere. As such, we should think about building our messaging strategy to center on that fundamental fact. The prospect of which is a massive and yearslong undertaking, for it means building relationships everywhere, and tailoring content to the stories of the real people in the real ecosystems that are buckling under the rising heat and rising seas. But if we can help people understand how and why their native ecosystems are disintegrating around them, we can win the people. And if we win the people, we can win the war.

[Censoring the reports] is dangerous for the country, Hayhoe said, comparing it to steering a car on a curving road by only looking through the rearview mirror: “And now, more than ever, we need to be looking ahead to do everything it takes to make it around that curve safely. It’s like our windshield’s being painted over.”

Hayhoe is great, isn’t she? If you’re unfamiliar, she’s a prof/scientist focused on communicating climate change science, which she writes about in ways that manage to be both conversational and urgent, optimistic and pessimistic. most recently Saving Us). Our windshield being painted over is a simple but potent metaphor because it’s so visual: we can all imagine trying to drive while our field of view gets smaller with each swipe.

But frankly, the visual of a windshield “being painted over” leaves something to be desired. Is there a way to keep the visual of the windshield and the paint but make the metaphor feel more sudden and violent and wildly out of control?

Yes. Allow me to leave you with exactly that, which I happen to have at my mental fingertips b/c I rewatched Raising Arizona last weekend. Please meet your new climate science censorship windshield metaphor, costarring John Goodman and William Forsythe as they drive away from the hayseed bank they just robbed: