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On Balance | Pelosi, Taiwan and climate: why military conflict might be good for the planet
- Economic activity that fuels growth also drives deadly weather events. The Ukraine war has forced Europe to rethink its reliance on Russian energy
- A Taiwan Strait conflict that disrupts global trade might make us stop consuming our way to climate disaster
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Devastating weather events, breakthrough climate legislation, economic warning signs and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Asia-Pacific itinerary dominated the US news cycle last week.
As the death toll from record flash flooding rises in Kentucky – which was still recovering from a once-in-a-century barrage of tornadoes that killed scores of people in December – there’s an obvious connection to climate legislation.
Perhaps it was the catastrophic images of the flooding that prompted Senator Joe Manchin, from neighbouring West Virginia, to reverse his opposition to the most comprehensive climate bill in American history.
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We can only hope that concern about the floods, violent storms and heatwaves that have been torturing Americans lately might shake some Republicans in Congress out of their climate change denial.
Florida Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott should be two of those most inclined to come to the same epiphany as Manchin. Much of their state rests on porous limestone, which allows rising sea levels to flood inhabited areas more easily than in other coastal regions.
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But the same ideological determination that has stripped American women of their federally protected right to abortion and stigmatised the LGBTQ+ community with the “don’t say gay” law has an equal disdain for any efforts to address a climate crisis that is now evident in every region of the globe.
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