Too hot.

It’s too hot. Too hot everywhere. Why?

The New York Times has an interesting piece today on surviving a heat wave. It also talks about how we got here.

Climate scientists say climate change is the reason. Burning of fossil fuels is a significant driver.

That’s an easy explanation, but what does it mean? The New York Times makes it pretty simple to understand. Heat trapping gasses in the atmosphere cause average temperatures to rise around the globe.

Former Vice President Al Gore sounded the alarm on global warming a long time ago. He was on ABC’s “This Week.”

Of this record heat, Gore said, “ They’re saying that if we don’t stop using our atmosphere as an open sewer, and if we don’t stop these heat trapping emissions, things are gonna get worse. More people will be killed and the survival of our civilization is at stake.”

Gore also said that global warming is trapping the heat equivalent of 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds really bad.

Are we really willing to fix the problem? I’m not so sure. It sounds great to say we want to reduce the use of fossil fuels, but are we really ready. Are we willing?

I want to believe I am.

President Biden recently announced several executive actions to address climate change. He did not go as far as what some climate activists want, however. Declare a national climate emergency.

On that, Vice President Gore said he will, “leave it to others to parse the pros and cons.” He did say that there is more the President can do.

Here’s something that appears to be a casualty of climate change… the North American monarch butterfly. It’s been classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

What’s happened to these beautiful monarch butterflies? The loss of plants they need as caterpillars and the forests where the adults spend the winter.

How bad is it? The Western monarch population declined by 99.9 percent from the 1980’s to 2021. The Eastern monarch population declined by 84 percent from 1996 to 2014.

Monarch butterflies. Just the latest species to face extinction.

Back to the heat. It’s just hot. Hot everywhere. Records are being broken. It may not be a climate emergency, but it sure feels like one. And let’s face it… it is.