Newsletter: Ignoring the latest grim news on climate change won’t make it go away

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, May 11, 2024. Here’s what we’ve been doing in Opinion.

In a media environment that capitalizes on dwindling attention spans, it’s easy to forget that the biggest, most difficult problems haven’t gone away or been solved — we just lost focus on them and moved on to something else. And amid salacious testimony of a former president’s alleged sexual peccadilloes and worries that those protesting college kids aren’t all right, we lose sight of the emergency staring us in the face, demanding our attention: climate change.

This week, the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper highlighted the gap between the public’s perception of the problem and the actual crisis underway by surveying scientists to gauge where they see humanity heading. To anyone who thinks gradually phasing in electric cars will stave off the worst of global warming, the Guardian’s survey results are sobering: Nearly 80% of the hundreds of scientists questioned say the planet will heat up by 2.5 degrees Celsius this century, and almost half think we’ll top 3 degrees. Just 6% believe the planet will stay at the internationally agreed-upon 1.5 degrees.

In other words, the scientists who make up the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believe we are much more likely to hit a catastrophic level of warming — 3 degrees — than achieve what the world has agreed will be dire but tolerable.

All of this makes it infuriating to read the L.A. Times editorial scolding local leaders for talking a big game on climate change but failing to deliver promised results. Metro, which pledged to convert its 2,000-bus fleet into emissions-free electric models by 2030, has only 50 battery-electric models and is already treating it as a “foregone conclusion” that the agency won’t hit its target in six years, according to the editorial board.

But Mayor Karen Bass and other city leaders are pushing back against Metro’s defeatism, the board notes, and in other areas they’re turning climate goals into legal requirements. There’s a lot at stake for residents and their leaders, the board says:

“City leaders’ environmental promises are only growing in importance as Angelenos increasingly deal with deadly heat waves, destructive wildfires, polluted air and other effects of the climate crisis. As those impacts grow worse, we won’t look back charitably on government officials who offered excuses rather than action to clean the air and cut use of fossil fuels.”

Did Stormy Daniels’ testimony help or hurt the case against Trump? It’s complicated. The adult film actor and director, whose alleged affair with Donald Trump set in motion the hush-money deal before the 2016 election, shared gratuitous details during her testimony, drawing rebuke from the judge. “You can be sure that the issue will come up on appeal should Trump be convicted,” writes legal affairs columnist Harry Litman.

Biden’s limit on bomb shipments to Israel may get Netanyahu’s attention. The U.S. has finally begun exercising its leverage on Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip, something it attempted to influence only with words. “It’s the right move, even though Israel may have a sufficient stockpile from previous U.S. shipments to press forward” with a full-scale assault on Rafah, says the editorial board.

The “Man versus Bear” TikTok meme went viral. Here’s another way to approach the question. Author Julia Phillips says there’s a long history, in literature and real life, of women embracing something more menacing than what they have: “Women have pursued dangerous animals for the same reasons they’ve built relationships with men. For entertainment, for friendship, for support. For love. For … more? A woman entering into an affair with a bear is a wild thought, but one supported by tales of human-animal connections told throughout history.”

For the greats of the Jazz Age, life on the road was perilous as well as glamorous. Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong painted a picture of glamour in talking about their tours throughout the country from the 1930s onward. Author Larry Tyre says that a closer look at the reality reveals more exhausting trips for the jazz greats and even the ways in which our society has improved over the decades.

More from this week in opinion

From our columnists

• Jonah Goldberg: What happened to the Republican war on “woke” — and what we should have learned from it
• Robin Abcarian: How many ways can a political memoir backfire? Ask Kristi Noem

From the op-ed desk

• Why L.A. County’s “Jane Fonda Day” declaration was so astoundingly insensitive
• Tough-on-crime proposal won’t solve retail theft, but it would crowd our prisons

From the editorial board

• Of course the death penalty is racist. And it would be wrong even if it weren’t
• What does L.A. owe the people who lost their homes in Chavez Ravine? More than an apology

Letters to the editor

• Did the UCLA protesters invite mockery, or should we take them seriously?
• The situation at UCLA is unacceptable. Blame campus leadership
• We can have wildlife protection and clean energy. These groups are showing the way