Climate change, politics, and a conversation with my grandma
DARIA FARMAN-FARMAIAN: Everyone is touched by climate change one way or another, yet it is still the elephant in the room that nobody want's to talk about. Drought in the Chad River Basin, rising sea levels at the poles, and increasingly frequent extreme weather events like Hurricane Maria are consistently politicized or overlooked. In her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Amy Coney Barrett called climate change “politically controversial.”
How have we gotten to the point as a country that scientific evidence of climate change cannot be agreed upon? Why do we have a presidential candidate who consistently denies climate science, arguing that the wildfires in California are because of a lack of “good forest management” instead of rising temperatures and lack of rainfall? Why do we still debate whether this was caused by human action?
Though there is a scientific consensus that global temperatures are rising because of human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases, politics always seems to get in the way of any action. In order to understand the partisanship that has taken over the climate change dialogue, I decided to speak with my grandma, Patricia M. Patterson, about her experience learning about climate change while growing up in Dallas, Texas.
As a girl, she, like everyone in her community, would throw trash out the window of her car and not think twice about it. She graduated high school and college not having studied any form of environmental science. In fact, no sciences in any field were offered to female students at the time — but, my grandma noted, that even in the male scientific education systems, there was no focus on the environment.
The first time she remembers learning about the topic was in her early twenties when Lady Bird Johnson started the country’s first “beautification” project. It was enacted in 1965 and aimed to limit outdoor advertising, junkyards, and roadside messes along America’s interstate highways. The male-dominated congress—and even her husband—was reluctant to support her, cementing a gendered, feminine stigma in environmental protection and sustainability that still persists through today.
My grandma, however, was struck by the importance of this project as the population in Dallas grew and more trash accumulated on the roads. People started becoming increasingly aware of the environment, and sustainability movements like Don’t Mess With Texas started cropping up.
The trend continued through the 1980s as the Cold War slowed down and the nation’s focus began to shift away from the fight against communism. This decade was also marked by a sharp increase in global temperatures, drought, and wildfires in the US. People started to pay attention.
In 1989, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established under the United Nations to address the science behind these issues and examine its societal implications. In 1997, President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol, enacted to reduce greenhouse gases. However, in March 2001, President George W. Bush rejected the protocol over concerns that the deal would hurt the US economy.
Throughout the 2000s, policy combating climate change has fluctuated. However, with the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the subsequent withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, climate change mitigation has taken a back seat in Washington DC. This inaction has consequences.
During quarantine where socially distanced walks were an important method of maintaining mental health and wellbeing, my grandma was forced to move in with us in New York because walking outside in Dallas was practically unimaginable in the extreme heat. Data shows that in the worst case scenario — which is business as usual — Texas will be unlivable in forty to fifty years. Unfortunately, climate change education in Texas is also still faltering. In a report by the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, Texas was given an F in terms of how well their schools addressed the realities of climate change and the role of human activity perpetrating it.
In many respects, not much has changed since my grandma’s generation. It is clear that the more people push for action against climate change on a legislative level, the more it is politicized as it is incorporated into certain platforms. Facts and values are conflated and the debate on climate change becomes symbolic of political agendas.
This should not be a political debate. Though legislative change does need to take place, scientists should be leading the charge on this movement and candidates should come to the table ready to argue what they think the best solutions are to enact change
Today, climate change, for many people, has only started becoming a part of national dialogue as COVID-19 put a halt on political affairs. It is only when our community is forced to look inward that climate change is addressed, if for no other reason than because climate change is everyone’s issue. It is the problem that is changing everything about the way we live and about the way our world functions. It is time to put aside our political differences and address the elephant in the room.
Daria Farman-Farmaian is a sophomore in Georgetown's School of Foreign Service from New York City. She is interested in global issues surrounding gender, climate change, human development and democracy.