Local opinion: It's time to learn what's true and vote blue
As the days tick down to the national election, I find myself thinking about deep time. And what is true.
Many Arizonans might say deep time is best found in the depths of the Grand Canyon, where the Vishnu Basement Rocks date back 1.75 billion years. I'll cast my vote for Kitt Peak, where my brother Bill once explained to me the birth of stars.
Bill was a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona who often said physics and chemistry do not lie. They don't care what we believe. They underscore objective truths so universal scientists that call them "laws."
He told me about the famous physicist Edward Teller who in 1959 attended the 100th anniversary celebration of the American Petroleum Institute when many industrialists congratulated each other on making a better world. But then Teller raised what he called "the question of contaminating the atmosphere" by burning oil (and other fossil fuels) that produced carbon dioxide (CO2), an odorless, colorless and seemingly harmless gas. But it is not harmless. It traps heat. If we burn oil at ever increasing rates, Teller warned, and load our atmosphere with CO2, we will overheat our planet and imperil civilization.
Oil scientists, especially those at Exxon, decided to see if Teller was right. After many years of investigation they determined that yes, indeed, he was. And so here we are, decades later, baking in a heat of our own making, with the eight hottest years on record being the last eight.
Physics and chemistry do not lie.
But some politicians do. Donald Trump has said climate change is a "hoax" and "one of the great scams." Tell that to thousands of Floridians as hurricanes intensified by a super-warm Gulf of Mexico shredded their lives, homes and communities.
Kamala Harris has called climate change an "existential crisis." As president, she will do her best to transition us away from fossil fuels and into renewables. As vice president, she cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the most significant climate bill in history that has created more than 18,000 green energy jobs and generated $11 billion in private investments in Arizona.
Enough sunlight strikes Earth in one hour to supply all of humanity's energy needs for a year. Yet here in Arizona, bathed in sunshine, solar panels are rare. With the right leadership, Arizona could one day lead the nation in solar power.
Executives at Exxon could have done the right thing decades ago and pioneered us into a green energy future. They did not. They and other petroleum giants, together with rightwing media, began a campaign of deception and denial that poisons and cripples us to this day.
If we are wise, humanity's tenure on Earth is now in its infancy, and a vast and wondrous future awaits. If we are foolish, the risks we face today will threaten humanity's long-term potential. These risks, writes the Oxford University philosopher Toby Ord in his compelling book, The Precipice, "require us to coordinate globally and intergenerationally, in ways that go beyond what we have achieved so far. And they require foresight rather than trial and error. Since they allow no second chances, we need to build institutions to ensure that across our entire future we never once fall victim to such a catastrophe."
This, too, is deep time – the long view into the past and into the future.
Building institutions and inspiring global coordination will require keen intelligence, critical thinking, open-mindedness and a commitment to what's true.
"Trump's lies are not errors," writes historian Heather Cox Richardson. "They are part of a well-documented strategy to overturn democracy by using modern media to create a false political world. Voters begin to base their political decisions on that fake image, rather than on reality, and are manipulated into giving up control of their government to an authoritarian."
Imagine Phoenix and Tucson at 130F. Imagine Arizona as destabilized as Florida is today. It's coming unless we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, embrace renewable energy, install solar panels, learn what's true and vote blue.
A former ranger with the U.S. National Park Service, Kim Heacox is the author of many books, most recently the novel On Heaven's Hill . He divides his time between Arizona and Alaska.
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