Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press
It’s always a pleasure to go to Miller Plaza, listen to the music and watch folks set up stalls for a festival. The activity this past weekend began at 5pm so I got there a bit early to watch them get ready. Everyone setting up looked happy even in the intense sunlight and a few kids even hopped, skipped and jumped around. I admire these younger folks doing their best with a temperature over 90 degrees. Us older folks are especially vulnerable to these heat waves and even standing in the shade made me sweat like mad. I’m thinking that climate change deniers and Supreme Court justices should stand with me. Maybe a little heat exhaustion would have them promote laws and projects to protect us.
This isn’t the first time that I’ve written about climate change. How could I not, especially given the heat waves, tornadoes, floods and highways crumbling off mountains? Climate change is neither a joke nor a conspiracy theory. The warming ocean water will bring us an historic hurricane season. And it just started with “Hurricane Beryl”, The average date for the hurricane season isn’t until August 11. Not only is Beryl early, but it’s the first ever Category 5 storm this early in the year.
Yes, there are natural causes for our climate situation like volcanic eruptions and solar activity. But according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “The primary reason for this remarkable stretch of record-breaking warmth around the world is due to human-caused climate change.”
Our country’s dilemma hasn’t gone unnoticed. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) asked, “Climate change is leading to more intense heatwaves and storms in many parts of the United States, so can some cities provide a refuge from extreme weather?” It turns out that being a “climate refuge city” is now a thing and one of the leaders in the trend is Buffalo, New York. The city’s mayor invited residents of hurricane-prone Southeast and wildfire-ravaged West to move to Buffalo to escape climate-induced disasters. The “Be in Buffalo” website now promotes protection from unlivable heat and weather-related disasters.
Unless we all want to relocate to climate havens, we should support the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its efforts to protect us. The EPA’s “good neighbor” rule restricts smokestack emissions from power plants that send smog-causing pollution downwind.
Of course, there’s objections to such regulation from corporations and energy-producing states benefitting financially from adding to climate change.
The pushbacks are now officially successful. The Supreme Court just blocked EPA’s interstate air pollution regulation. This isn’t the first time that the Court ruled in favor of polluters. In 2022, the justices limited EPA’s authority to fight air and water pollution with regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The so-called logic behind the decision has been to curtail the power of federal agencies. By also overturning what is known as the “Chevron” decision, other regulations regarding our public health, workplace safety and consumer protections may go out the window, too.
Back at Miller Plaza, I begin to wonder if this intense sunlight is hurting more than just my eyes. Did you know that industrial pollutants react to intense sunlight by forming ground-level ozone? It’s chemistry can cause respiratory problems and immune system issues. Protection against the downwind of ground-level ozone is now more iffy. Not a happy situation for the elderly and children playing outdoors.
Let’s dare the Supreme Court Justices to travel to the states downwind from this pollution and stand in the sunlight for a couple of hours. Then we’ll see how many regulations protecting us that they rule against.
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