The western half of the United States is entering a historic heat wave that will expose millions of Americans to extremely hot conditions that are expected to break records across California, Arizona and neighboring states. already on monday, 39 million people It was under heat advisories, and the heat wave will continue to expand and intensify as the week progresses, pushing temperatures 20 to 30 degrees above normal across the region.
This heat wave will have huge costs. Big oil companies should be asked to help pay these costs Exactly this kind of climate disaster These companies expected their products to cause…
This heat wave will impose huge costs.
This heat event will likely result in significant costs to public health, the economy, and water availability in the region.
Extreme heat is the deadliest cause of weather, and the March heatwave is particularly dangerous, because people are not yet accustomed to these high temperatures. Like the National Weather Service to cautionThis event would be “very dangerous, especially for those who are not acclimatized to the heat and/or are traveling from colder climates.” The 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave is live Cause More than 1000 deaths. The event, which features a heat dome similar to the one that led to the 2021 disaster, will likely not result in a high death toll, but the death rate may still be significant.
Extreme heat also has profound economic impacts. It has heat waves It costs Trillions of dollars in the world in recent decades $162 billion losses In the United States in 2024, the equivalent of about 1% of GDP. There is no doubt that this month’s heat wave will drain billions of dollars from affected families, businesses, cities and states.
Also of concern is the impact of this event on water availability and fire risk across the region in the coming months. After the warmest winter on record, the western United States is already experiencing one of its warmest The worst of the snow droughts In decades. This heatwave is expected to melt the region’s catastrophically low snowpack at least a month ahead of schedule, leading to a summer of dangerous drought and dangerous wildfire conditions during the upcoming dry season.
This heat wave is a climate disaster.
Although we’ll have to wait for a weather attribution study to confirm that exactly Through the causal relationship between this heat wave and human-caused climate change, it is clear that global warming is the main driver of this disaster. As the National Weather Service reported, “Many locations will likely record all-time high temperatures for March and the closest temperature on record is 100 degrees.” This intensity is at least comparable to, and perhaps more extreme, previous heat waves that studies have shown are caused by climate change. For example, a multiple extreme event Attribution studies She determined that the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” if not for human-caused climate change. A metastudy These types of analyzes found that climate change made this event between 340 times more likely and infinitely more likely, and that “the probability of heat wave severity in 2021 in a pre-industrial climate was essentially zero.” Scientists have drawn a similar drawing Conclusions About the heat wave that hit the southwestern United States in July 2023. This month’s heat wave is similarly out of step with historical precedent.
As Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, said, Put it down: “We know that in a world where temperatures are rising, we see more frequent and more extreme heat events. In particular, these are the kind of events that are most dangerous when it comes to thinking about extremes and climate change. This is going to be exactly that kind of event. It will be, in a climatological and statistical sense, record-breaking. I use this language deliberately because we’re not just breaking records, we’re breaking long-standing records by huge margins. Fundamentally, it would be almost impossible for heatwaves of this kind to occur if it weren’t for high temperatures that have already occurred.
Big Oil predicted heat waves like these and chose to cause them anyway, while lying about climate science.
A relatively small number of major fossil fuel companies are responsible for the majority of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. Only 100 companies responsible Responsible for 71% of total global greenhouse gas emissions generated since 1854, only 57 companies do so responsible For 80% of emissions generated since 2016. Climate attribution can increasingly determine the impact of specific companies’ emissions on specific heat waves. Recent climate attribution He studies Published in a prestigious magazine nature It found that for a number of extreme heat events, including the aforementioned heat waves in 2021 and 2023, the emissions of each of the largest fossil fuel companies — including, for example, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and ConocoPhillips — made these heat events at least 10,000 times more likely to occur, in the average analysis.
Not only did these companies contribute to this heat wave, they did so knowingly. For decades, major oil companies have been internally predicting this type of climate disaster. In 1996, for example, Exxon scientist DJ Devlin A Presentation To the Global Climate Alliance, a group of fossil fuel companies that colluded to spread climate denial during the 1990s, reviewing the science linking climate change to “suffering and death due to extreme temperatures.” He discussed how the elderly, the sick and the young would be particularly vulnerable. He explained the idea of threshold temperatures, referring to the point at which temperatures exceed the critical limit beyond which deaths rise dramatically.
In addition to severe and deadly heat waves, major oil companies have predicted many other serious damages resulting from the use of their products. For example, in 1989, Shell Oil Company produced a secret planning document Which predicted, based on “conventional and perhaps conservative” assumptions, that continued burning of fossil fuels would cause “more violent weather—more storms, more droughts, more deluges.”
By the time of this Shell report, the American Petroleum Institute had already spent years predicting that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels It will be “Catastrophic” and He owns “Serious consequences for human comfort and survival.” At the same time, Exxon was predicting global warming You will “Substantial and irreparable damage to our planet” And the reason “Suffering and death.”
Even knowing that their products would cause catastrophic climate disasters – including deadly heat waves like the one this month – Big Oil developed and organized a coordinated, decades-long campaign to deceive the public about the risks of climate change, and withhold solutions that could have prevented these disasters.
There are many interiors Strategic notes and External materials An outline of the massive disinformation campaigns carried out by major oil companies. It was designed, says one fossil fuel coalition Mission statement“, for”[r]Presenting global warming as a theory (not a fact).”
Documented methods used by big oil companies to deceive regulators, investors, and consumers about climate change include:
- to publish Deceptive ads containing false climate claims;
- directing Bought and paid for and scientists to fraudulently undermine the clear scientific consensus on climate;
- harassment Attempting to discredit scientists and activists involved in researching and communicating actual climate science;
- Deceptively attacking renewable energy efforts and policies;
- Greenwashing To falsely promote big oil products and brands as climate solutions.
There too Substantial evidence This conspiracy has delayed climate mitigation and adaptation measures that could have prevented climate disasters like this heat wave. in words To former Senator Chuck Hagel, who co-sponsored the resolution that blocked the United States from ratifying the international climate treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol:
“I have been misled. Others have been misled. When [fossil fuel companies] They had evidence in their private institutions that contradicted what they were saying publicly – I mean, they lied… It could have changed everything. [had they told the truth]. I think that would have changed the average citizen’s appreciation of climate change…me of course. It would have put the United States and the world on a completely different path, even if we were much further ahead today than we are now. “It cost this country, and it cost the world.”
Big Oil has already cost this country and the world. Extreme heat waves like the one that hit the western United States this month are just one of the catastrophic disasters these companies predicted their behavior would lead to. They should be forced to pay.
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