Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful (July 18th, 2026)

I got to spend some good time outside this week playing and coaching sports, which is one of my favorite things. Thursday before dinner with my parents, I got to hit some golf balls at the driving range and work on my short game. It’s a work in progress, but that’s not the point of this piece. The air was thick with smoke. The wildfires in Canada brought smoke into the Philadelphia area. The sun was a muted red circle that you could look directly at without it hurting your eyes, which was both pretty cool and extremely concerning. Then Friday, I got to coach American Legion baseball at regionals, and I will go coach another game again when I finish this piece. Baseball, especially coaching, is another thing that brings me great joy. On the drive to the game, there was a clear smoky haze that occupied my mind. Even during the games, there was a smoke that blanketed the trees in the backdrop of the field. The smoke has been inescapable. 

It was about twenty years ago that I first learned about climate change. I was 12 years old when I watched An Inconvenient Truth and learned that the planet was warming at unnatural rates due to human activities. It terrified me, and also made me want to work toward a sustainable future, not just for me and my generation, but for eons to come. The science is strong, but so are the observable impacts of climate change. Extreme weather is natural to some extent, the increasing frequency and severity with which they are occurring is not. I went almost thirty years without ever having the skies around my home covered by wildfire smoke (note: I have spent most of my life in the mid-Atlantic region), but this is the second time in the last few years. 

At the same time as this is going on, the chasm between our political parties to do anything about it is only growing wider. Somehow, climate change has become so politicized that there is fear of even talking about what we are living through without offending some people. I am not saying there isn’t room for different perspectives on the right approaches to take to address what is going on in the world around us, but I struggle with the inability and unwillingness to engage in discussions that address the obvious realities in which we are living, how that is impacting our lives, and productive conversations on steps we can take to address it. 

This winter was insanely cold. There was snow outside that did not melt for a month, snow iced over, got snowed on more, and iced over again before we ever eclipsed the freezing point. Now this summer is insanely hot. We have already had two heat domes on the east coast, or maybe it was one heat dome with a storm cell in between that cooled it off for a bit. I don’t know enough to know exactly what to call it, but I know that this weather is weird. As we look toward climate science, the trajectories that we are on are similar to what was laid out in An Inconvenient Truth two decades ago, but the trends have only become accelerated. We are hitting ecological tipping points quicker than we had anticipated. There has been irreversible damage done to the planet, and as we continue to stall on implementing and sustaining sufficient action to address the climate crisis, more irreversible damage continues to be done. 

Now, I do not believe that it is too late to do anything to address climate change. I have witnessed how incredibly resilient life is and how incredibly resilient our planet is. It is tragic that innocent life is being lost, human and otherwise, in greater numbers to increasing disasters, and I mourn that; however I also do not believe that all hope is lost. I believe that life will continue to find a way to survive, but we are making it unbelievably hard on ourselves, and making it even harder on future generations as the impacts of climate change compound over time.

Where I know that we accept the impacts of climate change across party lines is by looking at the increasing investment in climate resilience as it pertains to physical/built infrastructure. Coastal towns and cities and states are investing massive amounts of money in ensuring that their infrastructure can withstand the effects of rising sea levels. Other areas are building similar resilience for other sorts of disasters that could impact them. That is what should be done, but in more cases. Proactive work to mitigate against the impacts of what we are experiencing and know will continue to come. However, while this work is necessary, it alone is insufficient. 

In addition to physical infrastructure resilience to withstand the impacts of climate change, we must also increase individual and community resilience to withstand the impacts of climate change. Extreme weather is a major stressor, and can result in massive traumas. The death of loved ones and connection to a place someone has called home is a massive loss to cope with. We are seeing more and more of this. There is an abundance of evidence and practice informing efforts I am working on to develop Community Resilience Networks: cross-sector, community-led coalitions that organize to strategize and implement supports for communities to not just be able to withstand the stresses created by climate change (among other stressors), but to grow stronger by navigating those stressors together.

We have seen in disaster recovery that so much of the solution lies in neighbors helping neighbors. During and in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene, we saw everyday people doing emergency rescue missions to save people they had never met before. We saw Amish communities helping to build homes for those that had been devastated by the storm. After the wildfires in Lahaina, Hawaii, we saw community members and the state come together to support the mental health and wellbeing of those impacted by the fires, as the long process of recovery took place. Local coordination is only more important as FEMA is being dismantled. 

And in addition to this work, there of course needs to be work to reduce the damages we are causing to the environment. I know that many people do not believe, or are at least not convinced that humans are causing destruction to the planet. There was a powerful education piece I read while studying educational leadership called The Least Dangerous Assumption. It, while being outdated in some of its language, argues that special education teachers should assume that their students are capable of learning complex topics until proven otherwise. If we assume that a student cannot learn something so we don’t teach them that thing, then they will never learn it. The least dangerous assumption in that context is to assume that a student can learn something, and then if we learn otherwise we adjust from there. 

The least dangerous assumption we can make about climate change is that we are impacting the environment. If we try to do the work of reaching carbon neutrality and other core indicators of sustainability and we are wrong, then the dangerous trends we are currently on will continue. However, if we are right, then we will be able to reverse these trends. If we do nothing, however, and we are wrong, then we will have been able to stop at least some of the damage that we and future generations will experience. Which is the least dangerous assumption? I believe that it is to assume we have at least some ownership over the current situation. The actions being taken today are grossly insufficient. With respect to the wildfire smoke that influenced me to write this, the most recent action I saw from this Congress was a bill to sanction Canada for the damages caused by the wildfire smoke. This is moronic because: 1) the global trends that lead to wildfires in specific areas must be addressed by all of us, not just where the fires happen, as there is great interconnectedness in so much of this; and 2) the US has its own active wildfires that are causing smoke elsewhere, which weakens the US’ position as it opens up other countries and states to sanction the US or states impacted by wildfires. 

We need real action and leadership. There is so much fear about talking about climate change because it has become a political landmine, but I won’t be afraid to talk about it. I understand that people come to this topic from different places, and will be as sympathetic as possible in navigating conversations, as they are complex, and the stress that accompanies these topics is real. I have been dealing with the realities of that stress since I was a pre-teen, and I understand that people need to be supported as they navigate these learnings. We have been lied to by entrenched interests that have profited off not dealing with the problems that cause climate change, and are mistrustful of others with entrenched interests in certain climate solutions. Understanding how entrenched interests impact the seemingly different realities we are living in is a part of the Building Bridges work The Change Campaign is leading. But what Building Bridges comes down to is finding what we hold in common and building from there, focusing on relocalizing certain efforts rather than getting caught up in the culture wars that divide us. 

I believe that the overwhelmingly vast majority of people love the planet and love their children. When we think about the struggles so many young people are facing right now, based on my own experiences, I think one of the contributing factors is the fear, at least for many kids, about what the future of the world will be like for them. Even small steps to improve that trajectory matter. We can and must build Community Resilience Networks and physical resilience, because whether or not one believes humans are causing climate change or not, its effects are undeniable and we must be prepared for the damage from increasing disasters. I also hope that we make the least dangerous assumption and work toward sustainable infrastructure and practices, a space in which there has been incredible technological advancement. 

By reducing the impacts of disasters and the frequency and severity of disasters themselves, in true form to Full Capital, will save public systems incredible amounts of money. In 2024 alone, there were 27 climate/weather events that created damage, each costing more than $1 billion in the United States (NOAA). The true costs of these disasters were likely higher because the full mental health impacts of such disasters are not included in such calculations. So there is both a moral imperative and economic incentive to moving this work forward. While these are scary times, we can also find purpose in them, and refind each other as well. We can break through the partisan games and come together to find what we need, which will help prepare our society for future challenges we face. Throughout human history our ability to band together and cooperate has always been key to surviving, adapting, and remaining healthy and resilient. It is together that we have gotten through crises and solved complex challenges.