The sky outside is hazy orange, and my five-year-old son is screaming bloody murder. “Sorry, buddy, we have to stay inside,” I say. “It’s not safe to breathe out there.” I had told him we’d be going to the beach today. Something inside me tears a little as I wonder how many promises he’ll see similarly broken in the coming years.
Far too many parents were forced to have some version of this conversation with their children this month, as smoke from record-breaking wildfires poured across the midwest and north-east. Some of them already had to tell their kids that their Fourth of July festivities were canceled because of the lethal heatwave that caused numerous mass casualty events earlier this month.
According to scientists, these extreme weather events are not “natural” disasters. A team of researchers already published a study finding that the Fourth of July heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” but for the climate crisis. Other studies – using methods recently validated by the National Academy of Sciences, the country’s top scientific advisory body – found that the pollution from individual big oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP made some past climate-exacerbated heatwaves at least 10,000 times more likely compared with preindustrial levels.