Overshadowed by COVID: The Deadly Extreme Weather of 2020

2020 was alarming, unforgettable and traumatic—and not only because of COVID-19. Lethal natural hazards are increasing in frequency under our changing climate, and 2020 is a testament to that.

by

Chloe Brimicombe, Elliott Sainsbury, Gabrielle Powell, Wilson Chan

THE CONVERSATION 1/1/2021

What’s left of the Rio Grande forms much of the US-Mexico border. (Photo: Shutterstock/Piotr Kalinowski)

The year 2020 will no doubt go down in history for other reasons, but it is also on target to be one of the warmest on record. And as the climate warms, natural hazards will happen more frequently – and be ever more lethal.

We are early career researchers in meteorology, geography and environmental sciences, and each of us focus on a different hazard. We may not have been as in demand as our colleagues in virology departments, but we nonetheless had a particularly interesting and busy year. So while attention was often focused elsewhere, perhaps understandably, here are some of the meteorological extremes recorded in 2020.

Wicked wildfires

The year began with apocalyptic scenes of wildfires in Australia, fuelled by heatwaves. It was an image that would play out time and time again in 2020.

In June, Siberia began to burn on an unprecedented scale, at the same time as record temperatures which climate change had made 600 times more likely. 

A forest fire near the city of Cuiaba, Brazil, August 2020. Rogerio Florentino / EPA

Through July and August, the west coast of the US was ablaze. The worst wildfire season in 70 years again coincided with a heatwave, with Death Valley in California recording America’s highest temperature for at least a century – maybe ever.

By September, the Amazon rainforest and the world’s largest wetland to its south, the Pantanal, were on fire. More than a quarter of those fires happened in forest that had not been disturbed by deforestation.

In September 2019, fires in the Amazon had made worldwide headlines. In 2020 there were actually 66% more fires in that month, but attention was elsewhere.

Savage storms

In November, super typhoon Goni made landfall in the Philippines while at maximum intensity, with sustained wind speeds of 195mph. One of the strongest storms to ever make landfall worldwide, Goni directly affected nearly nearly 70 million people, leading to at least 26 fatalities – a number that would have undoubtedly been higher if not for the evacuation of almost 1 million people.

But it wasn’t just wind that posed serious hazards in the western Pacific in 2020. Tropical storms Linfa and Nangka caused significant flooding across Vietnam, exacerbating the problems caused by an unusually active monsoon. More than 136,000 homes were flooded and more than 100 people died.

There are now five Atlantic tropical cyclones from tropical depression to hurricane strength active simultaneously. This has only happened once before on record in 1971. #Paulette #Rene #Sally #Teddy #Vicky pic.twitter.com/WXwDwYr7W3

— Met Office Storms (@metofficestorms) September 14, 2020

In the North Atlantic, 2020 was the busiest hurricane season on record, with 30 named storms and six major hurricanes. The single costliest storm of the season, Hurricane Laura, made landfall in Haiti and Louisiana, killing 77 people and causing more than US$14 billion (£10 billion) in damages.

Two major hurricanes, Eta and Iota, caused significant damage in Honduras and Nicaragua. They made landfall in the region in November, just two weeks and 15 miles apart. This is a humanitarian crisis yet one that has received relatively little attention overseas.

A woman in Colombia looks out at the destruction caused by Hurricane Iota. Mauricio Duenas Castaneda / EPA

Frightening floods

The world’s deadliest flooding this year took place in east Africa in March through May. At least 430 lives were lost and an estimated 116,000 people were displaced in Kenya alone. The previous dry season was particularly wet, and was followed by above average rainfall during the “long rains” of March-May, meaning the vast Lake Victoria had twice its normal rainfall.

Africa on May 5 and 6, 2020: areas experiencing flood watch (red), warning (orange), or advisory (green) conditions. NASA / Margaret T. Glasscoe (JPL)

Though the rainfall was predicted in advance, locust outbreaks and COVID meant vulnerable people were already less able to handle the floods and secondary hazards such as widespread landslides and a cholera outbreak. The wet conditions were also ideal for further breeding of desert locusts. When it rains, it truly does pour.

Devastating droughts

Water crises caused by droughts and resource mismanagement were ranked as the fifth highest risk in terms of impact in the 2020 Global Risks Report - greater than infectious diseases and unemployment.

The severe drought across central and western US is the first billion-dollar drought of 2020, contributing to a record-breaking 16 weather and climate disasters with USD$1 billion or more in damages in the US in 2020 alone.

Conditions during 2020 represented the latest phase of a “mega-drought” over the past 20 years. By the peak in summer, a third of the US was in a moderate drought and much of the west was under severe to extreme drought. This coincided with abnormally hot summer temperatures and over 2 million acres of land burned nationwide, further enhancing drought conditions in a vicious cycle.

Drought conditions across the lower 48 states, on August 11 2020. NASA

The Rio Grande river, a major source of water supply for southwest states, would have completely ceased to flow had water providers not decided to pause existing water diversion schemes. Other impacts included crop damage from one in 50 year dry soil moisture conditions and a rise in dust storms  reminiscent of the 1930s Dust Bowl.

The latest seasonal outlooks estimate that drought conditions may extend westwards and persist into 2021, complicating the recovery from a difficult year.

Horrendous heatwaves

In May, while a large cyclone struck Bangladesh and eastern India, the north of India experienced temperatures of up to 47℃. This also delayed the onset of the monsoon, impacting farming.

The northern hemisphere summer saw repeated heatwaves, culminating in mid-August. Japan, for instance, had record-breaking temperatures with cities across the country having multiple days at 40°C. In one week, more than 12,000 people were admitted to hospital with heat-related illnesses. Even the UK’s heatwave, accompanied by tropical nights, caused 1,700 excess deaths.

An all too familiar sight. Juan Carlos Caval / EPA

At the start of the summer season in Australia, temperature records have already been broken. It seems the year will go out on an extreme high.

2020 was alarming, unforgettable and traumatic – and not only because of COVID-19. Lethal natural hazards are increasing in frequency under our changing climate, and 2020 is a testament to that.

Chloe Brimicombe, PhD Candidate in Climate Change and Health, University of Reading

Elliott Sainsbury, PhD Researcher, Hurricanes and Post-Tropical Cyclones, University of Reading

Gabrielle Powell, PhD Candidate in Environmental Science, University of Reading

Wilson Chan, PhD Researcher in Drought Risk, University of Reading

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

 DEMOCRATIC SOCIALSTS OF AMERICA

For the First Time, the Progressive Caucus Will Have Real Power

New rules will help Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) turn the caucus into a force to be reckoned with.

IMAGINE THE NDP AS A CAUCUS OF THE LIBERAL PARTY 

(PS ALL LIBERALS TURN RIGHT NOT LEFT)

by

Joel Blei­fuss

Published on

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

 by

In These Times

U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), the current co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) will lead as the sole chair of the CPC for the 117th Congress. (Photo by Salwan Georges/the Washington Post via Getty Images)

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty in the House is shap­ing up to be one of the most pro­gres­sive — and par­ti­san — ever, as mem­bers of the 117th Con­gress assume office Jan­u­ary 3. 

While some mod­er­ate Dems lost their House seats, the Con­gres­sion­al Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus (CPC) gained mem­bers, includ­ing Reps. Jamaal Bow­man (N.Y.) and Cori Bush (Mo.), both mem­bers of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of America. 

Yes, Belt­way pun­dits will belly­ache about the death of cross-par­ty comi­ty. But in Con­gress, bipar­ti­san­ship does not serve the inter­ests of the major­i­ty of Democ­rats, espe­cial­ly those who suf­fer the effects of struc­tur­al racism and gen­er­a­tional pover­ty. Look no fur­ther than three ​“crown­ing” bipar­ti­san achieve­ments of the 1990s: the 1994 crime bill, the Wel­fare Reform Act of 1996 and the 1999 repeal of Glass-Stea­gall bank reg­u­la­tion. The lat­ter came home to roost in 2008, enabling the finan­cial cri­sis. The George W. Bush administration’s sub­se­quent $700 bil­lion bank bailout res­cued Wall Street but did noth­ing for the 10 mil­lion fam­i­lies who lost their homes. 

Fast for­ward 12 years and we are again head­ed toward eco­nom­ic cat­a­stro­phe. The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and the expi­ra­tion of pan­dem­ic-relat­ed unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits will move 14 mil­lion Amer­i­cans one step clos­er to deep pover­ty and home­less­ness. This lev­el of eco­nom­ic des­ti­tu­tion has not been seen since the 1930s. 

One dif­fer­ence between the Covid-19 Reces­sion and the 2008 Great Reces­sion is that pro­gres­sives in Con­gress have since got­ten their act togeth­er. The CPC has restruc­tured itself (start­ing Jan­u­ary 3) into a dis­ci­plined, small‑d demo­c­ra­t­ic polit­i­cal oper­a­tion that will push pro­gres­sive leg­is­la­tion on the inside while help­ing raise a ruckus on the outside. 

Under new rules approved in Novem­ber 2020, the CPC will no longer be led by two co-chairs. For the 117th Con­gress, Rep. Prami­la Jaya­pal (Wash.) will lead. Anoth­er change requires mem­bers to vote as a bloc on issues sup­port­ed by two-thirds of the cau­cus. Should a mem­ber fail to adhere to this rule at least 66% of the time, they could face expul­sion. In addi­tion, mem­bers must attend CPC meet­ings and respond to requests from the cau­cus whip (cur­rent­ly Minnesota’s Rep. Ilhan Omar) about where they stand on issues. 

If some CPC mem­bers find the new rules unac­cept­able, no sweat. Jaya­pal made clear she ​“would rather have peo­ple who are real­ly com­mit­ted to the Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus in the cau­cus and par­tic­i­pat­ing rather than sort of just hav­ing it as a label.” 

Bow­man greet­ed news of the reforms with a tweet: ​“Ready to flex our mus­cle and join the era of col­lec­tive pro­gres­sive power.” 

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has restructured itself into a disciplined, small-d democratic political operation.

Jaya­pal, who entered Con­gress in 2016 (after a 20-year career as a com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er), admits in an inter­view with Seattle’s alter­na­tive week­ly, The Stranger, that it will become all but impos­si­ble to pass pro­gres­sive leg­is­la­tion should Repub­li­cans con­trol the Sen­ate. ​“Then we have to use an inside/​outside strat­e­gy like the one I was part of when we got Oba­ma to agree to [the Dream Act],” Jaya­pal says. ​“We may have to be the wind behind the sails that helps Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris deliv­er change through exec­u­tive action, if we can’t do it legislatively.”

Because the Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty in the House is so slim — just 13 seats — a unit­ed CPC could even extract the con­ces­sions from House lead­er­ship so des­per­ate­ly need­ed right now: evic­tion mora­to­ri­ums, stu­dent debt relief, unem­ploy­ment assistance.

These types of poli­cies are anath­e­ma to par­ty cen­trists, who appar­ent­ly would rather cap­tain a sink­ing ship than sur­ren­der any con­trol to par­ti­sans in steer­age. But pro­vid­ing actu­al eco­nom­ic relief is essen­tial to pre­vent Demo­c­ra­t­ic loss­es in the midterms and 2024. Move­ment-backed Democ­rats must be dis­ci­plined and orga­nized in work­ing with the new pres­i­dent, who inher­its a crisis.

Oth­er­wise, a ship­wreck is imminent.

Joel Blei­fuss, a for­mer direc­tor of the Peace Stud­ies Pro­gram at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri-Colum­bia, is the edi­tor & pub­lish­er of In These Times, where he has worked since Octo­ber 19

Hey, America, You Want a True Conservative Party?

We’ve already got one: it’s called the Democrats.

by

Mike Lofgren

LIBERALS ALWAYS TURN RIGHT NOT LEFT

The Democratic Party is what Ronald Reagan claimed he wanted of the 

GOP 40 years ago: a big-tent party. (Photo: Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images)

I used to be cautious about making predictions. This is partly because history is a complex, open system and predictions almost always come to grief in some important detail. It is also hard to take seriously the Chris Matthews school of punditry: make a series of wild predictions. Supposedly, everyone will forget the clangers, but if you luck into a correct one, the chattering classes will hail you as the next Nostradamus.

Nevertheless, I will now venture one categorical prediction that seems to run counter to the Deep Thoughts of some in the political class.

The Republican Party, with or without Donald Trump, will not factionalize, and—apart from a few marginal figures whom the media will falsely proclaim as the future of the GOP —will remain overwhelmingly united behind its present ideology and be competitive in national, state, and local elections.

What's more, the "principled conservatives" that the press rhapsodizes over couldn't fill a phone booth relative to the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump (the most any presidential candidate in history has ever received apart from Joe Biden), and the millions in state races who robotically pulled the lever for toxic imbeciles like Tommy Tuberville, or saturnine villains like Mitch McConnell. The disaffected few just might form a third party, but it will be an insignificant factor, like the Vegetarian Party or Kanye West's recent attempt at being elected as our singing Messiah.

Which brings us to Thomas Friedman.

Friedman is The New York Times' resident expert at always being wrong—but always in a manner acceptable to elite opinion. The last time anyone can recall Friedman doing anything noteworthy, he was cheerleading the invasion of Iraq—because we had to knock over some Middle Eastern country (it didn't really matter which) to ensure that people like Friedman could enjoy their fantasy of being vicarious tough guys.

Now he has joined the chorus of savants hailing "principled conservatives" as the future of democracy. Shorter Friedman:  A principled conservative third party could become kingmakers in Washington, and I want it, because it would be so cool.

This is the kind of spit balling that less than bright members of the chattering class indulge in because they think it's boldly counterintuitive. This springs from the deep emotional impulse of elite opinion-makers to canonize that mythical unicorn, the "realistic" fiscal conservative who talks gravely about the deficit, is tough on crime, and is a foreign policy hawk -- yet this fabulous creature is also a social liberal who approves of gay marriage and shows compassion for the poor -- as long as the help at the country club doesn't get any cheeky ideas about eating at the quality folks' table rather than just quietly serving the food.

So it's hardly surprising that during the 2020 Democratic primaries, Friedman endorsed Michael Bloomberg, who has never been quite sure if he is a Democrat or a Republican. The endorsement came in for the derision that so frequently accompanies Friedman's writings when he explains that, gosh-darn it, we shouldn't be so mean to hard-working billionaires.

Startling to think that only a few seasons ago, a guy who fit the Friedman profile to a "T" was Rudy Giuliani—now only a pathetic punch line and a comic, low-grade fascist (say, on the level of Putzi Hanfstaengl). Likewise, overacting Hamlets like Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse had their day in the sun as consciences of the Senate until the evidence of their charlatanism could no longer be denied.

Friedman's notion is not only wrong in attempting to find a sizable nucleus in the GOP who fit his criteria. Quite apart from his fundamental misunderstanding of conservatism, it is highly implausible because of the very structure of our political system and the nature of the electorate.

Let's look at the real correlation of forces:

Third parties don't fit the American political system. Countries like Germany can support more than two political parties because they have proportional representation. At all levels of government in the United States, "first past the post" is the overwhelming norm.

Why can't it be changed? Because state legislatures control election laws, and given the current two-party duopoly, why would they change it? Similarly, states continue to have a lock on determining ballot requirements and will set onerous hurdles for a third party just to get on the ballot.

At the national level, the Electoral College makes it all but impossible for a third party to win. Good luck with ratifying a constitutional amendment to change it. This is quite apart from the institution's built-in structural bias that will keep Republicans electorally viable and discourage any potential third party that simply looks at the odds.

Finally, a third party can never be a policy arbiter from the position of elective office. For the reasons cited above, very few will ever hold office. The sole claim of third parties to making a major impact is to act as a spoiler; this explains Republicans' efforts to get the aforementioned Kanye West on state ballots. This dynamic ensures that once the election is over one party or the other of the two-party duopoly will call the shots.

The electorate doesn't want a center-right third party. There are virtually no disaffected Republicans or swing voters hankering for a moderate, center-right party.

Record turnout in 2020 hardly suggests widespread dissatisfaction. On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of Republicans voted for Trump, Tuberville, and the rest of the menagerie because the base likes what they represent and wants more of it. The record turnout, with Trump and down-ballot Republicans outrunning what most polls projected, suggests that they were picking up demographics that don't ordinarily show up in surveys or that don't even ordinarily identify as Republican. Why is this phenomenon not more widely understood?

The Republican Party is not remotely recognizable as a conservative party; it is now somewhere between radical-reactionary and fascist. 

I suspect the reason is that journalists, academics, and the like blanch at the conclusion that must be drawn from the data. Nearly half the electorate seems to really like the idea of being ruled by fascism wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross. But this evidence—that a near-majority of Americans scoffs at the rule of law, flocked to the polls in 2020 in the hope that it would be the country's last presidential election, and still hopes for a violent coup—is an intolerable thought. So the punditry creates a fantasy world with a happy ending: the rise of a new party that is an amalgam of Eisenhower, Jerry Ford, and Everett Dirksen.

The facts before our eyes tell us that Republicans held the Senate (assuming the Georgia special election outcome doesn't beat rather long odds), gained seats in the House, and maintained their bastions in state legislatures. This is unusual for a party losing a presidential election. So why would Republican officeholders, whether "principled" or pragmatic, stampede for the exits?

Indeed, the party is well positioned for 2022. If past is prologue, the American electorate will vote Republican. Why? Typically, they vote for divided government two years after the beginning of the first term of a president (never mind that they spend the rest of the presidential term bitching about the gridlock they voted for: logic has never been an American virtue). As for Democrats, they may stay home as they did in 2010 and 2014, either from complacency, dissatisfaction, sheer stupidity, or from the fact that their party didn't bother to mobilize them.

The conservative party is the Democrats. A favorite sport among progressive Democrats is to decry the bulk of their party as corporate sellouts (key phrases: "Democratic Leadership Council," "something-something Bill and Hillary"). The party establishment, meanwhile, imitates a long-suffering schoolmarm trying to keep her unruly charges from burning down the classroom whenever it contemplates progressives spoiling what the leadership fantasizes (usually wrongly) is its brilliant plan to sweep the next election.

The point is not to say who is right, but to remind everyone that the Democratic Party is what Ronald Reagan claimed he wanted of the GOP 40 years ago: a big-tent party. It is more tolerant of differing views than the Republicans—think of Joe Manchin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—so that claims that both parties are equally polarized are nonsense. The party did not move nearly as far to the left as the GOP has lurched to the right, and it did not quash dissent to anywhere near the extent of the Republicans.

The Republican Party is not remotely recognizable as a conservative party; it is now somewhere between radical-reactionary and fascist. Given this asymmetric drift, the Democrats are America's conservative party based on the sheer geometry of the political spectrum. A closer examination of policy and political disposition bears this out.

Here's how Michael Oakeshott, a conservative political theorist much quoted by the likes of Bill Buckley and George Will, described conservatism: "To be conservative . . . is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss."

Whatever the self-congratulatory aspect of that epigraph, it more nearly describes the Democrats than their opponents. They respect well-established programs of the past like Social Security and Medicare; they are cautious incrementalists, as the Affordable Care Act showed (a bill whose fundaments were taken from a Heritage Foundation plan of 20 years before).

Democrats have greater respect for the Constitution and the rule of law; they more strongly obey the traditional norms of decorum; they recognize the fact that revenue is obtained by taxation rather than the supernatural mystery of the Laffer Curve, a pseudo-law resembling the Biblical story of the fishes and the loaves. Republicans are the genuine utopians; the fact that sane people would consider GOP nirvana to be a living hell is a detail.

This conservatism spills over into cultural categories as well. The two highest officials in the Democratic Party, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, are devout, traditional Catholics. And Donald Trump? Mitch McConnell? (We pass over the religious fundamentalist extremism prevalent in the GOP base: it has degraded Christianity to the theological level of Aztec ritual cannibalism).

The GOP is no longer the party of small-town accountants in three-piece suits and matrons wearing corsages and big hats; the cast of a MAGA rally typically resembles the extras in the director's cut of Deliverance.

Finally, as I have argued before, the Republican Party has descended into pure nihilism, the diametric opposite of what conservatism claims to be.

None of this will be redeemed by "principled conservatives," creatures that, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, many people claim to have seen. And just as with those cryptic icons of popular lore, the purported witnesses have never provided any evidence for their existence.

Mike Lofgren is a former congressional staff member who served on both the House and Senate budget committees. His books include: "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government" (2016) and "The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted" (2013).