Our View: Gov. Brown, Pope confront the ‘troglodytes’

Torrential rains collapsed a bridge on Interstate 10 last weekend. Rivers of mud threatened homes in Riverside counties. Great bolts of lightning closed beaches along the coast and chased away campers in the Sierra. Wildfire jumped I-15 in San Bernardino County, forcing drivers out of their cars in a race against the flames.

Here in the Northern San Joaquin Valley it was really, really muggy. Yes, we admit our odd episode of weather doesn’t really compare. But we’re supposed to be enjoying the “dry heat” of a Valley July, not a summer in Atlanta. Oh, and did anyone forget, June was the hottest on record.

The apocalypse is not upon us. But soaring ocean temperatures and a gathering El Niño have generated a record number of Pacific cyclones; Greenland is suddenly turning green as its glaciers melt away, and rising sea levels threaten coastal cities from Miami to Shanghai.

This isn’t a script for the latest Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson movie; this is all too real. But we do have a couple of unlikely superheros who might lead the fight to save the Earth. Pope Francis and Gov. Jerry Brown are in the forefront of combatting the global ennui in the face of climate change.

The Pope convened a conference in Rome this week to discuss his encyclical on the climate, which cast this fight in moral terms. Gov. Brown spoke Tuesday, repeating his message: The hour is late.

Many still resist recognizing climate change as a crisis. Such conferences will be meaningless unless developed nations make confronting global warming a priority and persuade the world’s worst polluters – China and India – to join the effort. By persuade, we mean threaten with trade sanctions or stipulations on products sold in America.

Unfortunately, our gridlocked national politics won’t allow such bold measures. Climate-change deniers walk proudly through the halls of Congress, doing the bidding of oil and minerals tycoons to obscure the truth.

Gov. Brown had a word for such people Tuesday: Troglodytes. Confronting the troglodytes, he said, is “a moral imperative for humanity.”

Noting ruefully that he has no faith in Congress to act, Brown called for local action with the mayors of New York City, San Francisco, San Jose several other American cities in the audience.

Naturally, Brown did a little bragging. He noted California has “the most efficient” buildings in the world and 40 percent of the nation’s electric cars. “But we’re not stopping there,” he said, laying out plans to reduce fuel consumption by 50 pecent.

The governor, a former Catholic seminarian, has persuaded 18 states and provinces in nine countries to sign onto a California-led commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps more will join this week.

We will, however, join the Pope in pointing out that some market-based remedies put more burden on the poorest than on those actually doing the polluting. That should change.

Much needs to be done, and the odds are daunting. Oil companies and coal-burning utilities loudly insist that virtually suggestion is too radical, too ambitious, too severe. We disagree. The perils isn’t doing too much, it is in doing too little.

And the costs to all of us will only grow as mankind confronts bigger wildfires, more ferocious storms and hotter heat waves. There is no way to outrun these calamities unless we start now.

This story was originally published July 21, 2015 at 3:37 PM with the headline "Our View: Gov. Brown, Pope confront the ‘troglodytes’."