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Thursday, October 29, 2026Oct 29

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Opinion: This planet’s on fire

Photo by Matthew Busch of The New York Times / First responders tend to a man in distress and showing signs of heat exhaustion near Town Lake Trail in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday July 20, 2022.
Photo by Matthew Busch of The New York Times / First responders tend to a man in distress and showing signs of heat exhaustion near Town Lake Trail in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday July 20, 2022. Photo by Matthew Busch of The New York Times / First responders tend to a man in distress and showing signs of heat exhaustion near Town Lake Trail in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday July 20, 2022.

Now that “flash droughts” are a global reality, can we please address our growing climate crisis? Climate models that predicted extreme weather in about three decades from now are actually coming true this week. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court restricted the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants.

No wonder U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said, “The world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home the international abdication of leadership is criminal.”

Some folks respond by making measured arguments for doing nothing. They’re claiming that it’s too expensive to take action when inflation is so high. So attempts to address the growing danger must be firmly rejected, according to people like Democrat Joe Manchin. Yes, Manchin is following the money, his money. He’s a fossil-fuel mogul in the coal industry.

Super rich often look the other way when it comes to the climate crisis. Look at Hollywood icons such as Sylvester Stallone and Howie Mandel. Having paid all the fines that California placed on them, they’re watering their acres relentlessly, endlessly. Can’t say I’m sorry that California’s residents are fed up with their hubris (and the state is cutting off their water).

Politicians and candidates are fighting against this supposed government tyranny with wild conspiracy theories. For example: Georgia GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker is urging Peach State citizens to vote for his climate conspiracy nonsense:”Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got to clean that back up.”