Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot.

We have just witnessed two back-to-back monster hurricanes, Helene and Milton. The storms were supercharged by climate change. The storms passed over ultra-warm temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. The heated waters acted like fuel, intensifying the hurricanes and making them far more powerful than they might otherwise have been.

A new study by researchers with the World Weather Attribution, an international network of scientists who conduct rapid studies to assess the impact of climate change in major weather events found climate change made Hurricane Helene stronger and wetter.

Ben Clarke, an author of the report, called climate change “a total game changer” for hurricanes like Helene and he said, “We found that essentially all aspects of [Hurricane Helene] were amplified by climate change to different degrees, and we’ll see more of the same as the world continues to warm.”

Clarke explained that it is not the frequency of hurricanes that has changed. It is the intensification of storms. The study found that rainfall from Hurricane Helene was about 10 percent heavier due to human-caused climate change and winds were intensified 11 percent. There is no mystery about what is behind the climate change. There is a scientific consensus: burning fossil fuels adds heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere which causes both air and water temperatures to rise.

The summer of 2024 was the hottest on record and this year is likely to be the warmest ever measured. Up until this year, 2023 was the warmest year on record. The warming trend is beyond dispute.

In his book “The Heat Will Kill You First,” Jeff Goodell writes, “Right now we are more than halfway to 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) from preindustrial temperatures, which scientists have long warned is the threshold for dangerous climate change. The reports of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are full of harrowing details of what might happen to our world with 3.6 degrees of warming, from collapsing ice sheets to crop-killing drought.”

I have been struck by how in spite of increasing and repeated climate disasters, politicians on both sides fail to put the superstorms in context and sideline the subject of climate change. They minimize the gravity of the amplified heat. There is a tendency to see each storm in isolation like they are unrelated and to miss the pattern in how our world has changed.

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This has been reflected in the failure of both parties to situate climate change as a central issue in the presidential campaign. Undeniably though, the position of the Republicans has been far worse. Trump calls the science of climate change a “scam” and a “hoax.” He mindlessly promises to “drill, baby, drill.” He wants to do away with new pollution standards for vehicles and power plants. And it is hard to think he is kidding. In his first term, he rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations.

Republican climate denialism is so extreme that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law requiring that climate change will not be considered when crafting energy policy. His legislation literally removed the words “climate change” from many state laws. This is turning science denial into state policy. Considering its recent hurricane history, Florida should make the ostrich the state bird.

As for the Democrats, at least Vice President Harris calls climate change “an existential threat” and says the United States needs to act urgently to address it. She is not a climate change denier. She wants to expand the government’s role in fighting climate change by regulating fossil fuels and by incentivizing the use of renewable energy.

At the same time, Harris has not made climate change policy a central pillar of her campaign. She doesn’t talk about it much. She has backed away from Green New Deal rhetoric and has cast herself as a pro-business pragmatist. She has bragged about America’s level of oil production during her tenure as vice president and she reversed her position on fracking.

So we have one entirely retrograde party that will do the bidding of fossil fuel executives and the other party taking an ambiguous pro-environment position. At least the Biden-Harris administration set a goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030.

What is missing is any sense of urgency around climate. Extreme heat is remaking our planet and the clock is ticking. How much time do we have before the climate becomes unbearable or uninhabitable for life?

Greta Thunberg has written, “The climate crisis is about time. If you leave out the aspect of time, then it is just one topic among other topics. If you take away the countdown, then a collapsing glacier, a forest fire, or a record heatwave is nothing more than three independent news events, a series of isolated natural disasters. If you fail to include the aspect of time, the climate crisis is not a crisis.”

The human response to climate change matters tremendously. An effective response could lessen the collective harm of unregulated greenhouse gas emissions. We can affect the speed and extent of the rising heat. That alone could save millions of lives and allow for the survival of more biodiversity.

Part of the climate denialism we are seeing now is the retreat into conspiracy theories and misinformation. Twitter/X is full of absurd postings about globalist cabals geoengineering the weather.

Climate denialism endangers all humanity and all life on earth. As humans, we have an amazing ability to be diverted by distractions. I am reminded of that book titled “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” In this election, we must vote like climate matters because it does.