column | The new climate system is not self-evident

Meanwhile, the neighbors upstairs closed the door behind them. The school across the street has been closed for weeks. While walking in the evening, a scattered window on the street still lights up. I have a fifty meter outdoor pool on the edge of town for myself. My friends, if possible, look for the sun. I understand that. The vagaries of Dutch summer can simply cry out for the cobalt blue skies of France’s South Drôme. At the same time, I’ve seen reports of wildfires and scorching heat waves. Temperatures above 37 degrees were also recorded in the Netherlands.

“Just enjoy it,” one troll clown commented on Twitter. “This is the most wonderful summer in the rest of your life,” I saw elsewhere on a sign written by a young climate activist. We’ll see, but the cases and graphs don’t lie.

When I moved to Paris in 2004, it never occurred to me to install an air conditioner. But in recent years, this has become an increasingly serious consideration. Heat waves became more frequent and lasted longer. The protocol of closed windows and a 1.5 liter bottle of frozen water for the fan is no longer sufficient. This wasn’t the main reason to go back to Holland, but there was a count. In this way, I am a climate refugee, having fled to my country.

The temperature in the French capital has risen 2.5 degrees since industrialization began; Half of that happened in the last thirty years. The city council has now unanimously approved an assessment titled “Paris at 50 Degrees”. I had to close my eyes when I read it.

“This is not a prophecy, conjecture or hypothesis,” Alexandre Florentine, the Green Party adviser responsible for the project, warned in a statement. Le Monde. “We’re in a new climate system, where people are already suffering, and it’s only going to get worse.” The idea is to demolish the asphalt, plant trees en masse, and largely renovate the concrete social housing park.

climate policy. There is consensus in the city of Paris about the seriousness of the situation and the measures to be taken. On a national level, things can be very different. Take the United States, for example, where one man, nominally Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of the unimportant state of West Virginia, has opposed President Biden’s ambitious climate plans.

The plans provide a significant reduction in fossil fuels, bringing the goals of the Paris climate agreement back into view. Also important, because it will put Americans in a leading role in the field of CO2₂-shorthand. You can’t lecture the emerging economies of the global south on climate change if you do hardly anything to clean up your mess.

Republicans are in bloc against them, citing rising inflation. It’s a fallacy along the lines of earlier “end of the month vs. apocalypse” – common during the yellow jacket era.

However, Biden was hopelessly stuck, because Senate Democrats need every vote. The progressive camp was bitter. Qadriya climate activists. Not without reason: With midterm elections in the fall as Democrats threaten to lose their majority, this may have been their last chance. But now Mansion is still over. He was made far-reaching promises, including on the construction of a gas pipeline in his state. An example of muddy old politics. Can we breathe a sigh of relief now? Yes and no. Yes, because Biden’s plans are already a step forward; No, because knowing he can count on one voice is more than terrifying.

Marine Crook Historian and journalist. He writes a biweekly column on politics and climate time representation.