By Carl Yaeckel / Op-Ed San Diego Union-Tribune / July 31, 2025
Climate change is coming.
This year climate seems to be the forgotten topic (there are a few other things going on!). But ignoring something doesn’t make it go away.
Have you heard that due to climate change impacts (fire, flood, storm) in “10 or 15 years, there are going to be regions of the country where you can’t get a mortgage,” quoting Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s recent testimony to Congress?
Did you know during the last year the United States spent 3% of its GDP on recovery from climate disasters? That’s a trillion dollars. Throw in increased insurance premiums and the figure goes higher. Oh, about insurance, particularly homeowners insurance: it’s required for a mortgage and the price is going up, particularly in areas more prone to fire, flood and storm. Premiums have doubled since 2017.
Got kids (or grandkids)? A recent study published in the journal Nature concludes that “children and young people born in the present decade face exposure to heatwaves, crop failures, floods, droughts, wildfires and tropical cyclones, in a way that their parents and grandparents never did — and that this applies pretty much anywhere in the world.”
Climate change is coming, even if you believe, hope or pretend it isn’t.
And what is our government doing about it? It would be bad enough if it were doing nothing, but it is worse than that. This administration is doing everything it can to promote dirty fossil fuels and to discourage clean energy. This in spite of the fact that clean energy has become in some ways cheaper than fossil fuels. All over the world, (and particularly in China) governments are speeding the transition to the clean energy future, while the United States doubles down on the energy systems of the past. It’s been said the world is heading for 2030, while the federal government heads for 1930.
The administration is also gutting scientific research on climate and clean energy, while at the same time slashing the systems that warn of impending disasters (think NOAA), and that help people recover from them (its goal is to “phase out” FEMA).
Climate change is coming, and the world is acting.
The good news is that governments, investors and businesses around the world recognize the need to move to clean energy. And they are acting. Last year approximately 90% of new power plants in the U.S. and around the world used clean energy.
From 2010 to 2024 the percentage of new cars that were electric vehicles worldwide went from near zero to 20%. In China this year, it’s over 50%. The U.S.? We’re at just 10%.
Climate change is coming, and you can help.
So what can you do to help? Plenty! Action is possible when people engage with hope and common purpose. Talk about your worries about climate change with family, friends, and neighbors. Arm yourself with solid, reliable information from the many available sources, such as NOAA, NASA, EPA, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, etc. Most of us are worried about climate change, but few of us talk about it.
Make a habit of letting your representatives in government know of your concerns. Many governments already are pricing carbon, either with cap-and-trade, or carbon fee and dividend laws. America needs to do the same. Support organizations that are working for robust climate solutions. In these times, democracy is not a spectator sport.
At the very least, we need to reverse the disastrous course our federal government is setting. If our government won’t help, it should get out of the way, so that market forces which favor cheap, clean energy can do their work. Of course, we will not be leading the world in developing the power systems of the 21st century, but we won’t be actively delaying the clean energy transitions.
It’s just a matter of time. But how much time this takes will determine how livable our children’s world will be. The longer the transition, the worse things will get. Join us in acting today. We can do this!
Carl Yaeckel is a resident of Ocean Beach, a retired attorney and leader of the San Diego Central Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, a nationwide nonpartisan group working for climate solutions. .
Thank you, Carl, for making it clear once again that: (1) our country is going backwards in addressing energy needs, (2) we will fall far behind other countries in the world who are planning for the future of their energy needs in creative and positive ways, (3) we have destroyed centers of scientific research to help us develop clean energy alternatives, and (4) WE NEED TO SPEND SOME TIME INFORMING OURSELVES ABOUT THE FACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. I know President Trump said he loves the uneducated, but it is our job as citizens and voters to find out the truth of what is happening to us, our country, and our kids’ and grandkids’ futures. Thank you for pointing this out.
Carl Yaeckel…Coming? Is that a snark? Where you been? It’s happening all around us and has been for decades!
I can’t get homeowner/fire insurance in these mountains on the Canadian Border due to the radical shift in wildfire activity. State Farm, Farmer’s, Mutual of Enumclaw, and a host of other ‘large’ corporate firms bailed on us after the town of Paradise burned to the ground down there in NorCal. When my renewal came up, I received a politely worded form letter stating they would not due to ‘circumstances’ beyond their control.
In other words, they would no longer make enough money to make it worth their while. That was…2018 so I’ve been uninsured for eight years now. My luck is still holding.
The effects of this ongoing Climate Destabilization our industrial civilization has wrought has been ongoing for decades now and very, very apparent to those who have paid attention. People like Glikson, Wadhams, Hansen, knowledgeable scientists I’m sure you have paid attention to (and many more) have been posting the ugly reality for far too many years…scary stuff that people just don’t want to hear. So they don’t, do they?
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Joni, our country is NOT going backwards unless it turned around in mid-air after it jumped off the cliff years and years back. Maybe head-first into the jagged rocks below is a more accurate current description?
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About this summer (so far). A cut:
“I don’t think we can understate just how impressive this heat dome was. It covers 2/3 of the nation, in which 80% of the country’s population over the 7-day heatwave period will hit 90+ for a high temperature (~260 million people). The peak intensity of the heat dome was record-breaking for the SE US in late July. It peaked at 3.7 standard deviations, based on statistics from the past climate records we have, which means this heat dome is rare, if not virtually impossible, in our former climate of the 1900s. But human-caused climate change now makes these extreme heat domes much more likely.”
From the climate scientists at World Weather Attribution: ‘Every heatwave in the world is now made stronger and more likely to happen because of human-caused climate change.’
I lived through the Pacific N/W Heat Dome of 2021. I experienced 120’F temperatures and watched the insects-both ground and flying and the birds that feed on them, die off in large numbers. They have NOT come back in the last 4 years. The ground baked so hard it died. I watched baby robins die as soon as they pecked a hole in their shells, and watched mama robins abandon the last eggs that never broke the shell. In 2020 there were 25 robin nests on this property that I knew of, and dozens of hummingbirds nesting, too, along with mountain bluebirds and mountain finches. All disappeared. The heat decimated the 72 species of birds that live around me in this forest!
They have not returned in anything close to the numbers that used to be here. I could go on, talk about what I’ve seen with the various stressed firs, larch and pine species. The dead fish floating in creeks that heated up too much that summer. No, Climate Change is not ‘coming’ Carl. It’s already slammed down. Since 2021 my thermometer has hit 113’F a couple of times, and crosses the triple digit mark regularly now. People never needed AC here and few had it when I bought this place in 2004. That’s sure changed…as has the cost of electricity to run these awful machines.
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Then of course there is what’s going on up north of me:
Troubling scenes from an Arctic in full-tilt crisis
https://grist.org/climate/troubling-scenes-from-an-arctic-in-full-tilt-crisis/
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And what about to the far south and the extremely troubling scenes coming in from the melting and fracturing Antarctic ice sheets? And everywhere else on the planet for that matter that has a mountain glacier! Oops, bye-bye glaciers.
But of course the collapse of the mild Holocene Era climate of the last 10,000 years is all a ‘Chinese Hoax’ anyway, right? At least according to our Dear Leader who keeps mouthing the words “clean coal” and “drill baby drill.”
Stupid is as stupid does, and those who profit off this will not let themselves be convinced because money is, of course, much more important that a livable planet.
Big sigh.
sealintheSelkirks
What happens when the masses become collapse aware?
History has an answer for that nobody will like reading.
https://www.collapse2050.com/what-happens-when-the-masses-become-collapse-aware/
sealintheSelkirks
A short music vid on this topic from Australia:
Paul Kelly – Sleep, Australia, Sleep (Official Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hY1w_c7nO4
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It’s the entire world, and some nights the realization makes me so sad I can’t sleep. Tonight is one of those nights. Sent to me from Climate Activist Kevin Hester in New Zealand…
sealintheSelkirks
For some unknown reason, the computers programmed by human that we call ‘AI’ are taking up the wealthy and the fossil fuel industry’s fight for the status quo of business as usual. Is anybody really surprised?
AI ‘Slop’ Websites Are Publishing Climate Science Denial
https://popularresistance.org/ai-slop-websites-are-publishing-climate-science-denial/
Of course these so-called ‘thinking’ machines may just be helping us along in our quest leaving what’s left of the planet to them, eh?
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This link below begs the question: What if AI has taken over the government? That would explain a lot…
A Potentially World-Ending President
Tom Engelhardt
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/08/a-potentially-world-ending-president/
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sealintheSelkirks