Dan Rodricks: Climate change is affecting how we live, work, play
When it comes to summer recreation, it looks like we’re going to spend more time indoors and less time doing the things we were used to doing — when we wanted to do them — from May through September. Climate change has made it so.
Of course, the current U.S. government says there’s no such thing as climate change. The Trump administration has conducted a purge of references to the dreaded term on federal websites. The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday revoked all the science behind the causes of global warming and took itself out of the climate fight as the fossil fuel industry cheered. To top it off, the Republican-backed One Big Beautiful Bill provides aggressive repeals of climate actions taken by previous administrations.
So, for the time being, we are cooked.
Climate scientists have been warning for years that we only have so much time — about a decade now — to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before rising temperatures cause even more destruction around the globe and make life more challenging.
And yet the political right laughs at those warnings and the president walks away from efforts to slow the climate clock.
Still, polling shows that most Americans believe climate change is underway and that human activity — mostly, the burning of fossil fuels — is the cause.
In denial or not, everyone feels the heat and, if they’re honest, they acknowledge that extremes in weather have affected them.
They’ve affected everybody.
They’ve killed some people. Heat-related deaths have been on the rise nationally over the last two decades; there have been more than 21,000 such deaths in the U.S. since 1999, according to a study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
This summer, Maryland health officials reported 19 heat-related deaths as of July 30, with the number of heat emergencies up significantly.
The summer is when global warming is most real to us, and so summer habits are the ones most likely to change or prompt the most caution.
Those who work in the sun — who do farm work, road work, lawn work, collect our trash — will face risks more frequently than earlier generations did. They should get hazardous duty pay and liberal leave.
How we play will also be affected.
Climate change is already forcing adjustments to summer recreation and how we spend our valuable free time.
Gardening never made sense in the high heat of midday. But climate change could render it impossible in all but the early morning or evening hours.
Same with golfing and biking and hiking and running, even taking the dog for a walk.
Fishing has become tougher in summer, and not just because of the oppressive heat. Fish that are caught and released for sport become highly stressed. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources suggests that summer anglers leave trout alone and go after warm-water species — the invasive blue catchfish and snakehead, for instance.
Studies have demonstrated that abnormally high air and water temperatures can harm Chesapeake rockfish. Maryland prohibits anglers from targeting stripers for two weeks, July 16 through July 31. But, given recent weather patterns, it’s hard to imagine conditions improving — for the fish and the angler — in August and September.
Football practices traditionally start in summer — the NFL first, then colleges and high schools. That probably won’t change for a while yet. But higher temperatures over longer periods will make outdoor practices more challenging. The extremes might even force a later start to the football season, though that would require, at the pro and collegiate levels, prioritizing human health over profits.
Two members of Congress from Maryland, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks and Rep. Kweisi Mfume, are co-sponsors of a bill requiring school and university athletic programs to have heat-related emergency action plans (EAPs) that include the use of cold-water immersion equipment. The legislation is called the Jordan McNair Student Athlete Heat Fatality Prevention Act, named after the University of Maryland football player who died in 2018 after collapsing from heat stroke.
And it wasn’t even summer yet when McNair collapsed with a body temperature of 106 degrees F. It was late May.
“I think there has to be some standardization [to EAPs] to protect these kids,” Mfume said during a recent interview. “They’re all so very young, and at that age, people think you’re going to live forever. They are just trying to do all they can by exerting themselves as hard as they can to make a team and be successful.”
Mfume thinks he’ll get bipartisan support for the bill. “We can save lives,” he said. “This is something that Republicans can’t claim is anti-American or anti-Trump. This is pro-life in a very real way.”
As is battling climate change. You’d think the “pro-life party” would take it on instead of sounding retreat and renouncing any responsibility for the future.
Dan Rodricks’ column appears weekly. He can be reached at djrodricks or danrodricks.com