Hot Enough For You? Get Used to It

As temperatures rise, storms intensify, and floodwaters creep higher, MAGA Republicans are tearing down the protections meant to save us. Politics is driving everything now, common sense be damned.

Back in the 1970s, when I was just hitting adulthood, New York City averaged about 10 days a year with temperatures above 90°F. Now we can expect to see 25 to 30 of those scorching days annually, and that number is still climbing.

I bring this up because on the first day of summer this year, it hit 91 degrees in my backyard, part of an intensifying heat wave rolling across the central and eastern United States this week. It’s bringing well-above-average heat to millions of people from the Midwest to the East Coast, and prompting health advisories across several states.

Forecasts call for 99 degrees today, but if the sun overdelivers, and it has been known to do that, New York City could crack 100 for the first time since 2012.

Get used to it, folks. In 25 or so years, when my youngest granddaughter, who is now 6, is planting her garden or hurrying off to work, we could see as many as 60 days over 90°F, according to projections by the New York City Panel on Climate Change. That means increased heat stress for my little girl and her future family, higher energy bills, and deteriorating air quality.

And still, MAGA Republicans won’t act. Climate change has become a political issue for them, not a common-sense one, and certainly not one based on fact.

In Donald Trump’s America, everything is based on politics, driven by the political theology of his far-right enablers. If a Democrat says something is important, or even slightly good, Trump’s MAGA minions are immediately against it, no matter the actual outcome, no matter the damage that’s done, no matter who is hurt.

With each successive wave of the political system — from Bush to Obama, to Trump, Biden, and Obama again — Americans are being whiplashed and worn down by a never-ending cycle of outrage and reversal.

Democrats worry about climate change, saying study after scientific study has established it as fact, and pointing to the flooding, drought, and more intense storms that prove it’s occurring. MAGA Republicans say it’s a made-up concept.

A killer pandemic is slowed and then controlled with vaccines; Trump’s health folks say none are really safe. Electric vehicles, solar energy, and wind power all get government grants from one president, creating new industries based on the realities of the modern world. The next president drops them like hot coals, saying they’re wasteful extravagances, based on phony science and globalist agendas.

It’s not just science under attack; it’s all evidence-based understanding. Our public health systems, our schools, our growing diversity, and our historical memory are all being dragged into the crossfire.

Trump’s supporters like to call themselves conservative. But this isn’t about slow-walking carefully into the future. It’s about control. It’s about using our natural fears about what may be coming down the line to gain the unquestioning support of those who feel left behind by a culture in flux, and a world that’s a bit too complex for those who want easy answers.

To do that, Trump and his Project 2025 cohorts are dismantling what we know, discrediting who knows it, and destroying the institutions that once helped us move forward together. And with everything now framed within the political arena, nothing gets done, and we all suffer, no matter our political leanings.

Hot enough for you? Just wait.

Hottest on Record

I’ve heard people say, “Hey, it’s summer; it’s supposed to be hot,” which is true. But we’re talking record-shattering heat, not just typical summer highs. In 2024, surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico (or whatever you want to call it these days) reached nearly 90°F, the hottest levels recorded since the start of satellite monitoring some 40 years ago.

Warmer water means more evaporation, pumping additional moisture into the atmosphere. That, in turn, fuels stronger storms, driving up wind speeds and supercharging the amount of rain dropped when hurricanes make landfall.

In 2024, Hurricane Milton’s winds exploded from 35 mph to 160 mph in under 49 hours, making it the fastest Atlantic storm on record to leap from a tropical depression to a Category 5 hurricane, the most dangerous classification. That same year, Hurricane Helene dropped as much as 30 inches of rain in parts of western North Carolina, killing more than 100 and causing millions in damage.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has proposed a 31% cut to the Environmental Protection Agency and gutted NOAA’s climate science programs. And Trump’s derisive call to “Drill, baby, drill” signals a green light for the oil and gas industry to keep extracting their products, accelerating climate change on three fronts, according to scientists.

How so? First, drilling and extraction releases vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, through leaks from wells, pipelines, flares, and abandoned sites. Carl Pope, a former Sierra Club executive director, notes in a New York Times guest essay yesterday that methane traps about 80 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide over 20 years. And methane emissions, which are driving an estimated 45 percent of human-caused warming, are rising rapidly, he says.

“I now believe that cleaning up methane leaks from the production and shipping of oil and gas — one of the most significant sources of these emissions — is the best hope we have to avoid triggering some of the most consequential climate tipping points in the next decade,” Pope writes. “I think realistically it is our only hope.”

At the same time, the burning of fossil fuels adds CO₂ to the atmosphere, the most prevalent greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases form an invisible blanket around the Earth, trapping heat and warping weather patterns. Finally, Trump’s fossil-fueled agenda delays the clean energy transition, locking in decades of climate damage and dependence.

The danger isn’t just climate denial anymore. It’s deliberate sabotage, fueled by Trump’s political spite.

Global Sea Levels

I live on Long Island’s south shore. It’s not just the Gulf affected; the oceans are rising too. Global sea levels have climbed nearly nine inches since 1880, according to the federal government’s own estimates. Recently, I’ve started seeing groundwater rise on my property during high tides and heavy rainstorms. When I bought my house a decade ago, it didn’t seem like much of a problem. But since then, I’ve seen it occur more and more.

Since the mid-20th century, melting glaciers and thermal expansion have turned a slow creep into a surge. The planet’s average surface temperature has risen by about 2°F since the late 19th century, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). And most of that warming has occurred over the past 40 years, driven by carbon emissions from fossil fuels, deforestation, and industrial agriculture.

Two degrees doesn’t sound like much, right? But the effects are everywhere.

Storms are getting stronger and wetter. Insects, especially ticks and mosquitoes, are thriving, bringing diseases like Lyme and West Nile farther and farther north. Crops like corn, wheat, and soy are more vulnerable to heat stress and shifting rainfall patterns. Wine regions are moving. Fruit and nut harvests are declining in places like California. Wildfires are more frequent and severe. Snow melts earlier. Rivers run lower by midsummer. Coral reefs are bleaching.

And those nasty insurance premiums we all pay for our peace of mind? They’re spiking in coastal zones. Just ask the older folks who have moved to Florida. Two degrees isn’t just a bump in the weather. It’s the sign of a global system bending under strain. And we’re increasingly pouring fuel on the fire in the name of political purity.

The New American Religion

Trump has been a main instigator of this for nearly two decades. But let’s be honest here, we’re all at fault. American voters too often miss the forest for the burning trees, if you’ll pardon a badly-turned cliche. The cost of eggs and bananas takes precedence over the cost of environmental collapse. How we address each other takes precedence over how we govern together. Media outrage and partisan score-keeping have taken precedence over common sense.

Meanwhile, politics itself has become the new American religion, demanding faith, loyalty, and total emotional investment at the expense of real-world results. And the bottom line? Nothing meaningful gets done, and nothing gains the permanence needed to be effective.

We’re not going to agree on everything, and we certainly can’t fix everything all at once. But we can start by stepping back from the political noise now and then to spend a few minutes asking ourselves what kind of future we want for our communities, our kids, and the planet we share.

Like I said, my youngest granddaughter is now a very cute, though somewhat bossy, 6-year-old. I want her life to be less threatened than my own. Can we cool things down before the heat of politics burns through what’s left? I’m not so sure anymore. What do you think?