Newsletter: Think El Niño might be bad? Wait until climate change really gets going

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, May 27, 2023. Many thanks to my colleague Kerry Cavanaugh for taking over this newsletter on short notice two weeks in a row. Let’s look back at the week in Opinion.

In a week where the biggest news stories had to do with the unforced errors of powerful men — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ glitch-ridden presidential campaign kickoff and the ludicrous debt-ceiling standoff come to mind — I’d like to start with something that puts those into perspective as mere sideshows compared to something that truly has the final say over all of us. I’m talking about nature — more precisely, the likely return of the climatic phenomenon known as El Niño, a natural warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that often portends a wet year in California.

A year ago, when Gov. Gavin Newsom was threatening mandatory water restrictions amid a drought, we might have looked forward to El Niño. Now, the Sierra Nevada is smothered by a record snowpack, and the long-drained Tulare Lake is reappearing in the San Joaquin Valley. A year of warmer temperatures and above-average precipitation falling as rain instead of snow is the last thing we need.

And climate change intensifies the risk. The last El Niño year, 2016, was the hottest year on record globally; we’ll probably be hotter this year, exceeding the 1.5-degree Celsius of warming seen as a climate change tipping point. Thankfully, a single year of 1.5 degrees isn’t the stuff true tipping points are made of — but if we find the looming heat waves and floods from this El Niño intolerable (not to mention the ones that have already happened recently), imagine what several years 1.5 degrees warmer might look like. The term “Earth breakdown” used by climate scientist Peter Kalmus comes to mind.

But let’s keep the focus on this El Niño, which by itself has plenty for us to worry about. According to geography researchers Justin S. Mankin and Christopher W. Callahan, you can’t really set aside climate change from the discussion, even though El Niño’s occurrence doesn’t depend on it. And the economic consequences are truly mind-boggling:

“El Niño happens even in the absence of people and greenhouse gas emissions. But now each El Niño amplifies the impacts of global warming, from droughts afflicting Indonesian palm oil plantations to floods inundating Chilean copper mines. The consequences of El Niño look a lot like those of global warming, so reducing our vulnerability to the former will increase our collective readiness for the latter.

“Lastly, estimates of the future costs of climate change must account for the phenomenon. According to our estimates, global-warming-driven changes to El Niño will reduce worldwide income by about $84 trillion by the end of the 21st century. This strengthens the imperative to reduce warming and its mounting costs.

“Past El Niño events offer California and the nation a valuable lesson: Even if we set aside future warming, we are poorly adapted to the climate we have.”

Thankfully, the Dodgers overturned their blown call. The manufactured outrage over the inclusion of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at Dodger Stadium’s Pride Night caused the team to panic and rescind its invitation to the group. The backlash was swift, prompting the Dodgers to reevaluate and then reinvite the Sisters. Columnist LZ Granderson says the Dodgers found their true selves in this controversy: “There are a lot of enemies of the LGBTQ+ community. The Dodgers are not one of them. Their real priorities won out when they reinvited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Pride Night.” L.A. Times

When efforts to increase “diversity” evolved into anti-racism, states like Florida struck back hard. Law professor Osamudia James sees this as a tantrum born of white guilt: “The backlash against anti-racism initiatives is a scramble to avoid responsibility for the problem of race. Florida’s new law goes beyond critiquing ideas about race to silencing and censoring discourse about racial history in order to avoid accountability.” L.A. Times

The Department of Justice’s classified documents probe may wrap up soon. Trump should be worried. We’ve been here before with special counsel Jack Smith: A flurry of activity sets off speculation that an indictment of the former president is imminent, only to have the investigation grind on. But Harry Litman says the end of Smith’s probe promises peril for Trump: “Smith has likely been able to make the basic case for prosecution to [Atty. Gen. Merrick] Garland for some time on the grounds, set out in department standards, that 1) Trump did the crimes and 2) a conviction is probable. His prolonged endgame does not suggest any fundamental weakness in the case. Rather, he’s acting with the prudence and imagination that the most important prosecution in the history of the Department of Justice requires.” L.A. Times

Well, this makes me feel better about my (arguably lazy) parenting style. I have a “that’s life” approach to raising my three young children — in other words, while they can count on my love and support, they are not shielded from the consequences of their actions or complications of their feelings. So I nodded when reading this part of the lovely essay by 17-year-old Zach Gottlieb on mental health: “In my house, discomfort wasn’t just OK, it was encouraged. We talked about coping with difficult feelings, not avoiding them or trying to make them go away with screen time, the food court or parental involvement. My mom’s view was almost existential: Life is hard, and there’s no way around that. But if you can get comfortable with discomfort, she told me, you’ll be a more emotionally resilient person.” L.A. Times

L.A.’s Metro system should let everyone ride for free. Riding the bus was free during the worst part of the pandemic — and as a transit user, I can tell you it was a highlight of an otherwise dismal time. Metro was able to do this because fare revenue accounts for less than 2% of the agency’s budget, raising the question: Why can’t Metro do away with fares for good? Transit researcher Yotala Oszkay Febres-Cordero makes the case for doing precisely that: “Metro should be understood not as a business that delivers transit for a price, but as a public service that listens to, and invests in, community.” L.A. Times