One constant campaign slogan of former President Trump at all his nationwide rallies is “drill, baby, drill.” Every time Trump repeats this slogan with great gusto, his fellow Republicans respond with rapturous applause. That was especially true among his 9,000 MAGA supporters at his near capacity crowd on August 17 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which is a must-win state for the GOP.
Trump’s MAGA supporters in both Wilkes-Barre and surrounding Luzerne County, which the former president has incredibly visited five times since 2016, know that more domestic drilling, fracking and extending the 1,200-mile Keystone XL pipeline to the refineries on the Gulf of Mexico will greatly keep gasoline prices below $3.00 per gallon. It could also increase local jobs and reduce inflation by lowering the cost of overall transportation, thereby improving the regional and national economy.
According to Trump, his “drill, baby, drill” policy will restore American energy independence, and allow the U.S. to export more natural gas to Europe making it much less dependent on Russian oil, and also strengthen NATO. Unfortunately, “drill, baby, drill” will not be an effective energy policy in 2029. There is no rational denying that every year the Earth’s weather is becoming warmer, more extreme and more unpredictable resulting in “global weirding.”
Both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are becoming much hotter, and the subsequent dreaded hat waves are becoming much longer and frequent. That has been especially true in such places as Australia, Russia, Serbia, Bosnia, California, South Sudan and southern Africa.
However, there has been one place in 2024, which has had the worst summer temperatures on the planet: the Persian Gulf.
Last month I read a rather depressing article in the Washington Post on July 18 written by Dan Stillman. The article was entitled “The Persian Gulf is enduring life-threatening heat indexes above [my emphasis] 140 degrees.”
What especially struck me was the orange, brown, and charcoal colors displayed on the map’s thermal imaging at the top of the article depicting the entire Middle East The map’s colors, especially the Persian Gulf, greatly reminded me of a hot winter fireplace full of red-hot orange and blackish embers with no logs on the andirons.
However, others might prefer a much simpler word to describe the Persian Gulf: Hell.
The article’s subtitle was “The heat index in Dubai [United Arab Emirates] climbed to 144 degrees, as hot-tub-like water temperatures in the gulf reached the mid-90s.” That hit home because I have a friend named Maj [rhymes with dodge], who lives in Dubai.
When I texted him the Post article, he said that it was “hot as hell.” During the day the temperature often stayed between 110° and 120° with no precipitation in the forecast and a heat index between 130° and 140° along with a night temperature never below 90°. He also told me that his elderly 65-year-old mother, who wears a mandated black hijab (head and neck covering) outside her house, must start her family’s grocery shopping no later than 9:00 a.m. That way she can return to her air-conditioned house by 11:00 a.m. to cook lunch, and avoid the unbearable afternoon heat.
Almost one month later the temperature in Dubai on August 18 was still extremely hot reaching a “balmy” high of 106° and a projected overnight low of 90°. Unfortunately, the extended 10-day forecast for the remainder of the month according to the Weather Channel was oppressively hot and only slightly better than in July.
The best chance for any precipitation was unbelievably August 24 with an 8% chance of rain. All the other days had a forecast of no more than 0% to 2% for rain. Thankfully, the United Arab Emirates relies heavily on desalinated water from the Persian Gulf for drinking purposes.
I strongly suspect that the entire Persian Gulf area this summer may have been one of the hottest places in the Northern Hemisphere. However, I truly wonder what would happen to the world’s grain supply if the same type of heat dome settled stagnantly over the U.S. Midwest or Ukraine? It would certainly be a nightmare because both areas export huge quantities of wheat, soybeans, corn and other agricultural products to scores of needy countries all over the world.
I strongly suspect that both the U.S. and Ukraine could probably feed their own population, but without any appreciable grain exports, much of the world would definitely be in extremely dire straits or undergo a famine.
Instead of relying on “drill, baby, drill,” the U.S. needs to start immediately building more nuclear reactors by emulating France, which produces 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, in order to transition our energy dependence from oil, gas and coal to clean green energy such as nuclear fusion, wind, solar and especially geothermal energy.
If Trump is elected president, his policy of “drill, baby, drill” will not be successful in 2029, and environmentally it will definitely not be a long-term solution to global warming or climate change after 2029 either in the U.S. or abroad. The Persian Gulf’s blistering heat dome this past July was a prime example and stern warning to the world that climate change has become much worse in the last fifty years.
What occurred over the entire Persian Gulf in July was not an anomaly, but the future if both the U.S. and the rest of the world, especially mainland China, continue to rely upon fossil fuels. It will only be a matter of time until a similar heat dome, which could be just as bad and more expansive than the Dust Bowl (1930-36), hovers over much of the Midwest devastating a great part of our own agriculture, and vastly decreasing our agricultural exports to the world.
Perhaps a better Trump campaign slogan in 2024 should not be “drill, baby, drill,” but “build more nukes” or “geothermal energy: limitless energy.”
– Robert L. Maronic