The sea is warming. What do we do?

The temperature of the sea water keeps rising. Today we are giving record data for ocean surface temperature this July. The air is also heating up. And the drought is wreaking havoc in Europe, with the great rivers – Rhine, Danube, Seine, Po – at minimum flow, meadows the color of straw, and dry land and forests. We are living through an exceptionally hot and dry summer. The large fires, like the one in Bordeaux and those in the Iberian Peninsula, are the result of this set of factors that have come to stay. In the metropolises, where most of us live, life is becoming increasingly unbreathable and distressing.

And despite all this, against all scientific evidence and against its palpable catastrophic consequences in the environment, some hotheads, starting with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and all his global acolytes, still deny or trivialize climate change, as if it were a matter of wokes. What more needs to happen for them to fall off their high horse? It is already complicated enough to fight climate change without also having to fight climate disinformation.

Global warming is a fact with undeniable data. Just as the slow response we are collectively giving is a fact. Extreme phenomena –heatwaves, fires, storms, tsunamis– are overwhelming us with increasing frequency and virulence. And at the same time, everyday reality is also violating our comfort. Anyone who has dived these days off the Catalan or Balearic coast will have been able to verify how the water temperature has risen compared to what was usual. The new heated normal, beyond what may affect the summer pleasure of all of us, has serious direct consequences on the life of marine flora and fauna, and will also provoke violent meteorological phenomena when the late summer storms arrive. We can prepare ourselves. It's not a joke. In fact, the alert for El Niño, although the phenomenon will still take time to arrive here, has already been activated.

It is essential to advance general awareness of climate change. The refusal by the United States to take it seriously, which has once again boosted the use of fossil fuels, could have catastrophic effects. We were already dragging our feet in the global climate fight, as the scientific community constantly reminds us. Well, now things have become even more complicated. It's as if humanity were refusing to see an apocalypse right in front of its nose. It is the denial of reality in capital letters. It is a nihilistic attitude, a flight forward, a kind of crazy carpe diem: if it gets hotter and hotter, the answer is to install more air conditioners, and it will be another day. Those who come later will find it. The most absurd thing is that we are already finding it ourselves and that the situation is getting worse every year that passes, every hotter summer, every more extreme autumn. Of course: we need cooling and climate shelters, yes. But we need much more.

The sea and the land are warming up. What do we do? Look the other way? We can't flee to another planet. Perhaps we should remedy it in earnest, starting by making it clear how ridiculous and lethal the childish lightness of all the Trumpists in this world is.