What Will We Name Our Concentration Camps?

Heat Waves and Homelessness: Governments Will Say They Have No Choice

The June gloom and May gray have passed, and it’s starting to feel like summer in San Diego. It appears we’ll be getting off to a bang-up start, as a heat dome is expected to settle in over us in the coming days.

We’ve been mighty lucky so far, as the European Union climate monitoring service says the planet just passed through its hottest June in recorded history. Tuesday through Thursday of this week have likely been the hottest days in Earth’s modern history going back 120,000 years. 

A consensus being reached by scientists says climate change driven by anthropogenic*  global heating combined with the return of El Niño will lead to several years of record-breaking temperatures. This July is predicted to be the hottest month ever recorded. (* Man-made pollution, I had to look it up)

Today –July 7– almost 90 million Americans will see temperatures above 90°F.

In the coming days we’re looking at a major, prolonged heat wave across the Southwest, including California, towards mid-July. This strong of a heat dome will easily bring the region its most severe heatwave of summer and potentially break records.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board gets it:

• It’s frightening to see how fast the planet is warming and what that portends for countries across the globe that are feeling the effects of extreme weather, including intense heat waves, wildfires and drought. In China this week, 15 people have died and some 20,000 have been displaced by monsoonal flooding that has been especially severe. Last month, the eastern U.S. was cloaked in smoke from wildfires in Canada. And powerful heat waves in recent weeks claimed lives in Texas, Mexico and the Southwest, and across the globe in India.

• The time for incremental steps has passed. World leaders can’t ignore or hope to avoid the pain of global warming now that it’s here. They have an obligation to act. More than a century of burning coal, oil and gas has caught up to us. To slow rising global temperatures and prevent greater harm that would come with hotter days, sea level rise and extreme weather, the major economies of the world have to immediately switch to renewable energy and slash planet-warming pollution in half by 2030.

• Each record broken and new extreme is a warning that the planet is in distress. We are not doing enough to slow climate change and avoid greater suffering. But the human occupants of Earth are not powerless. The course forward is clear, though not easy or cheap. It requires dismantling the machinery of fossil fuels and replacing it with clean, renewable energy , electric vehicles and zero-emission technology .

What the Times doesn’t get is that “dismantling the machinery of fossil fuels” is about way more than transportation. The fundamentals of how we live and where we live are very much in need of addressing– residential density, alternatives to single vehicle transportation, and the way social services are distributed are all part of the picture. It won’t be easy, nor cheap. 

Here in San Diego the steadily increasing temperatures won’t be quite as bad as in many other parts of the world. And while we’re enjoying the moderating effects of Pacific currents, we’re also becoming a destination for migration caused by climate change.

Weather contrarians are quick to say something along the lines of “heat waves are weather, not climate change.” And they’re (technically) right. And seniors dying from heat stroke in overheated dwellings don’t give a damn about who’s right.

The fact is that climate change makes weather extremes more extreme, whether it’s high temperatures or monsoonal moisture. 

If you think we have problems with the current homeless population, just wait until any part of the 1.2 billion migrants driven from their homes by 2050 start showing up. 

Via the Guardian, quoting Steve Killelea of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), a think tank producing annual global terrorism and peace indexes:

• “This will have huge social and political impacts, not just in the developing world, but also in the developed, as mass displacement will lead to larger refugee flows to the most developed countries,” Steve Killelea, the institute’s founder, said.

• “Ecological threats pose serious challenges to global peace. Over the next 30 years, lack of access to food and water will only increase without urgent global cooperation. In the absence of action, civil unrest, riots and conflict will most likely increase.”

• The study uses United Nations and other data to assess 157 countries’ exposure to eight ecological threats, then assesses their capacity to withstand them. It found that 141 countries faced at least one ecological threat by 2050, with sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa the regions facing the largest number.

Donald Trump and his ilk won’t be able to build walls high enough to stem the flow; those coming will be even more desperate than the economic and political refugees currently pressuring our immigration system. And given the current logjam over not having any functional system, it’s going to be a disaster.

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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to rehear a decision ruling cities and towns have no right to remove unhoused people from the streets. The Oregon city of Grants Pass has told reporters it intended to appeal the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Given the unusually scathing dissents and statements by conservative judges, chances of further judicial review look good. And given the Supreme Court’s billionaire-selected majority, there’s a better than even chance being homeless will be criminalized in many places. 

Of course, many cities like San Diego merely go through the motions of not-busting up encampments. Our new ordinance aimed at street people will take effect in just three weeks, as the Sheriff’s Department is expanding jail capacity.

Political, legal, and economic realities have constrained cities trying to do the right thing (a roof over people’s heads). Now there is a growing backlash fueled by GOP partisans who are saying treatments for addiction and mental illness should be a condition of housing.

Both paths over what to do with (to) unhoused humans ultimately end up in the same place: incarceration. The growing numbers of homeless humans will put governments in a position where “rounding ‘em” up is the only viable choice. The reactionary path means incoming detainees will be handed a bible.  

Climate change refugees will increase the population needing basic services who end up on the street, meaning more people locked up. So the government will feel obliged to set up “camps.” And since no neighborhood will want this addition to their community, the desert looks to be the most viable solution.

A lack of urgency over the changing climate, thanks to the all-out assault on science coming from the right, means all-of-the-above measures won’t happen. As with what happened to tv meteorologists who seemed overly concerned last year, this year’s expanded chorus of scientists and (a few) politicians will get death threats and internet harassment aimed at their families for speaking out.  

The political landscape demands this stochastic terrorism aimed at anybody disrespecting MAGA “truths.”  And it comes from a concerted campaign by Dirty Energy to convince the public that up is, in fact, down.

From Progress Report:

• Republicans and dark money from oil companies and other mass polluters have successfully politicized the very existence of climate change, to the point that in a poll conducted earlier this year, only 23% of GOP voters considered it a major threat. That’s the same number as it was in 2013, suggesting that a decade of weather-driven carnage never happened. Even Democrats are falling a bit behind; while there was a big jump between 2013’s 58% and today’s 78%, the number was as high as 84% back in 2019.

• Worse, only 37% of Americans think that dealing with climate change should be a top priority, and the issue ranked as 17th most urgent among the 21 presented to voters polled.

What brings up to the point of government organized camps for all the humans finding themselves outside the mainstream. I’m sure they’ll be different by state, with Florida, for instance, rounding up gay people, and Oklahoma doing bed checks to ensure bible study. In California we’ll likely see “sorry–not sorry” excuses based on perceived public health threats. . 

Since “we” are culturally inclined to advocate for “me” these days, the biggest choice to be made will be what to name these camps. 

Back in the 1930s, homeless encampments set up by people with seemingly no way out were called “Hoovervilles,” in honor of the president whose economic policies brought us the Great Depression. 

I suggest looking at names invoking the neo-liberalism era. Or maybe Frank Zappa’s prescient “Concentration Moon.” Or maybe even “We Told You So.” The Pete Wilson moniker on the lead graphic is just a placeholder

Moving Through Some Other Headlines

Australian minister calls Donald Trump Jr a 'big baby' over canceled tour Via Reuters.

• But O'Neil, one of the highest-ranking ministers in the centre-left Labor government led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, said Trump had been granted a visa, and poor ticket sales was the reason he called off his visit.

• "Geez, Donald Trump Jr is a bit of sore loser," she said in a series of posts on Twitter that were later deleted.

• "Donald Trump Jr has been given a visa to come to Australia. He didn't get cancelled. He's just a big baby, who isn't very popular.

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The Right-Wing War on Knowledge Via Jill Filipovic – From research on guns to the study of gender-affirming care to books themselves, conservatives want to shut down the pursuit of knowledge.

• What is clear is that today’s GOP is concerned with exerting dominance: Owning the libs, humiliating immigrants, demeaning gay and trans people, putting women back in our place. And the GOP is concerned with maintaining a grip on power at all costs — no matter if the person who wields it threatens American democracy, sows toxic doubt about American elections, or makes clear that they share common ground with white supremacists.

• For all the Republican talk of protecting children and focusing on the family, their real concern is power. And the less access to information the public has, the easier the public is to manipulate and control.

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Oklahoma school head wants to leave race out of the Tulsa Race Massacre Via Laura Clawson at Daily Kos

• Attacks on LGBTQ+ kids and on teachers as “groomers” and “indoctrinators” have mostly replaced right-wing hysteria about critical race theory, but Oklahoma state schools superintendent Ryan Walters was willing to show off his circa 2021 “I don’t know what CRT is but that won’t stop me from talking about it” chops on Thursday night.

• Walters took questions at the Norman Central Library, and although the event was sponsored by a county Republican Party, he got some tough ones. Like, “Why are you banning books and coming to speak at a library?” Someone even brought a laugh track. But a question about the Tulsa Race Massacre really laid bare the willful ignorance and vacuousness of how Republicans lob accusations of CRT to deflect from talking seriously

  about U.S. history.