Watching the devastation from Hurricane Ian, I see it as a message to voters thinking about not just the midterm elections, but elections in 2024 and beyond as well. Tradition has a couple of old saws that need to go away: “All politics is local” and “It’s the economy, stupid.” We are in a different world, and the pandemic should have taught us that both politics and economics are global and will remain so.

Every vote I cast going forward will be decided by voting for my children, my grandchildren and future generations globally. That means no Republicans. For the Earth, global warming towers over every other issue.

Does anyone think those folks with 7 feet of water in their homes were thinking about inflation? Hardly. We now have a growing segment of our U.S. population called “climate migrants”: people moving from areas of our country to get away from excessive heat, constant wildfires, thousand-year floods, drought, etc., and moving to more temperate areas.

To mitigate global warming in time to save the Earth, the U.S. must lead the way as a functioning democracy, not a Christian, white supremacist, minority rule autocracy, as today’s Republican Party seems to favor. A party of denial, Republicans are poised to dismantle democracy, and their record on fighting global warming is equally repulsive. Insurrection and withdrawing from global initiatives, as we saw under Donald Trump, will lead us to a “Mad Max” world. The choice is clear.

Herb Fox
Limerick