Let's Talk About the Weather

It’s hard not to notice the weather lately. Not for the reasons that you’d usually expect with it being late winter in Virginia, a season which is usually accompanied by low temperatures and puffy jackets, but for the exact opposite. It's… warm. Almost all the time, actually. Each afternoon, the Lawn is spotted with colorful blankets and students basking in the mid-February warmth, wearing t-shirts and shorts instead of the traditional winter attire of pants and jackets. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, the trees are beginning to bloom. 

While I cannot say I complained about the warm start to winter this year, each day that I checked my weather app before leaving my dorm led to increasing concern about the continuation of this strange warm weather pattern. I cannot help but worry that this is indicative of the larger threat posed by global warming, which is only beginning to manifest in our everyday lives. Our reality is only becoming more clear: the United States government has to take action against climate change now, or run the risk of reaching the moment when any change is already too late to make a difference. 

Virginia is not the only state, nor the only coast, experiencing these strange weather patterns. This year, the West Coast has been bearing the brunt of the cold winter that the East Coast is accustomed to. On March 1st, a day where the Charlottesville temperature peaked at a warm 73º,  posts on social media detailed videos of snow falling in Burbank, a suburb of Los Angeles located at sea level in California. In New York, ski resorts that usually are overflowing with skiers during this time of the season have been forced to close due to a lack of snow, while mountains in the West are struggling to control the mass amounts of snow they have been receiving since November. It almost seems that the regular weather patterns on the two coasts have swapped. 

Following the lethal blizzard that struck the East in mid-December, the rest of this winter has been relatively warm for people along the East Coast. Across the state of New York, new peak temperature records were broken in February, with January being the 6th warmest on record in the United States. Meanwhile, across the country where the winter tends to be milder, snow and strong rainstorms have pelted the West Coast in the most unlikely of places. March 1st saw snowfall in Las Vegas, where the average temperature for the month lies somewhere in the mid-60s. The Sierra Nevada mountains in California and the Colorado Rockies have received record snowfall, with bases of snow totalling nearly 600 inches in some places. All signs point to increasing climate-related issues in both directions, with temperatures respectively increasing and decreasing in areas where they are not expected to. 

Unfortunately, this year seems to only be the first in a line of warmer winters. As temperatures in the summer become alarmingly high, it makes sense that global warming would begin to impact the winter as well. No year has that change been more evident than this one. By this point, I would have expected to at least witness a light dusting of snow across the red brick buildings of UVA, but this has yet to become reality, and likely won’t in the time we have remaining this year. It is evident that environmental change needs to happen now. However, it seems that our government is completely unwilling or unable to do anything that would lessen the damage caused by the warming of our planet.

A prime example of this is President Biden’s promised efforts on climate, which have not come to fruition. One of the pillars of President Biden’s platform during his candidacy was a restructured environmental program. President Trump left the White House having reversed environmental orders that were meant to tackle climate change and pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, a binding treaty signed by countries pledging  to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. From the beginning of his campaign, Biden made it clear that reinstituting environmental programs was of importance to him, and on his first day in office, he rejoined the Paris Agreement. However, the progress that he aimed for with his environmental agenda has not been nearly as substantial as promised. His goals are lofty: Biden wants to promote clean energy, increase the production of electric cars, build more infrastructure around environmental policies, and promote further environmental justice within our government. Many of these actionable items were included in Biden’s Build Back Better Act, a 2,000 page bill that was ratified by Congress after lengthy debate and restructuring this past August. It took two years for the Act to become policy due to the opposition posed by Republican senators, who voted unanimously against the bill, and Democrat Joe Manchin, who was concerned about the cost and scope of the Act. The resistance shown by Manchin and the Republican senators who voted against the Build Back Better Act indicates their inability to work together or compromise, even when the state of the global environment is at risk. This is truly a harrowing thought.

At some point in the past decade, the acceptance of climate change and the desire to do something about it has become a partisan issue. While Democrats are accepting of the governmental changes we must make to slow the warming of the earth, even they do not always vote with the planet in mind, as evidenced by the Biden administration agreeing to the Willow project in Alaska, which will ravage the natural climate in our Northernmost state. Republicans appear to be in pure denial about the state of global warming, or are simply aware that acknowledging our slow march towards the end of the world would also mean losing millions of dollars in donations from the fossil fuel companies that support them. At the end of February, the Senate voted to overturn a rule from the Department of Labor that allows retirement funds to consider environmental impact when choosing companies in which to invest. The bill went to President Biden’s desk in late March, and was the first veto of his presidency. It is disappointing and frightening that more than half of the elected officials in charge of keeping our country safe do not see the importance of taking action now to combat climate change. How much worse does it have to get? Was the reality of a snowless winter in Washington, D.C. not enough of a shock to the politicians working against the better interest of our world? 

I am not a prophet, so I cannot predict the future. I can, however, say with absolute confidence that our winters will only get warmer and the weather will only become more erratic if the government does not unilaterally decide to prioritize the environment over the economy. Sadly, judging by the current state of affairs, that may be a pipe dream. If the recent derailment of the train carrying toxic materials in East Palestine, Ohio is any example of how well the United States is equipped to handle environmental disasters, I have serious concern for our future. The government response was slow, and so far, largely ineffective, with many members of the small Ohio community living in homes filled with air pollution from the chemical fire. Similarly, on the 14th of March, Biden approved the Willow project in Alaska, which is a large-scale oil drilling project that threatens to endanger the natural wildlife of Alaska as well as the indigenous communities whose livelihoods rely on the natural landscape. Not only is this going completely against the environmentalist promises that Biden campaigned with so heavily, but the Willow project is sure to cause irreparable damage to the natural Alaskan landscape that cannot be reversed. At this point, I’m not sure what it will take for the government to prioritize, much less agree or carry out, on a formative environmental agenda.

Washington will soon have to confront the biggest problem plaguing the environmental policies that are struggling to be passed: environmentalism needs to become a bipartisan issue. While this task seems daunting now, a study from Northeastern University found that less than 2% of all climate-related philanthropy was devoted to educating climate deniers on the environment. This is a real missed opportunity to include the other side of U.S. politics in the environmental conversation, as most of the conservative rebuttals to climate action are easily refuted with a quick Google search. If grassroots environmental organizations were to invest resources into educating conservative communities, there is the possibility of a shift in their thinking towards more climate-positive policies, which would benefit us all. The so-called “eco-right” is a growing faction of environmental organizations that receive far less donations than the climate organizations that lean further left. If more money was invested into these groups, perhaps there would be a more robust Republican response to climate change.

Biden and the rest of the Democratic party need to draw a harder line with regard to the state of our environment, or come 2024, we need to elect leaders into office who will regard the issue of climate change with the severity that it is due. Additionally, more resources need to be invested in the eco-right groups struggling to gain bipartisan support of climate related issues. This could come in the form of more internet attention given to these groups or donations given to support their cause. Either way, substantive change is unlikely to occur without support from both sides of the political spectrum. If no agreements are reached between the leaders of our nation, we could be looking at another dry, 80º January and February a year from now, with hopes for positive change dwindling even further.

Juliette Calderon10 Comments