Heat domes, wildfires and drought: Where's outrage?

As I write this, the temperature is climbing past 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the mid-Atlantic states, and 170 million Americans are under warnings about a dangerous combination of intense heat and humidity. Is this latest weather extreme linked to global warming?

- Eugene Linden, Tribune News Service

Of course it is, as has been the case with record-setting floods, extreme hurricanes, droughts and wildfires that go back decades and afflict every corner of the globe. Amid these extremes, we have the Trump administration seemingly trying to roll back or reverse every environmental initiative of the past 55 years. Yet nobody seems to care.

In the early 1990s, I gave a lot of talks about how environmental awareness had become an American value. The early 1970s saw the passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Within 20 years, Time magazine was making planet Earth its “Man of the Year,” and the first Earth Summit met. But now I think I spoke too soon. On June 14, several million people took to the streets in the “No Kings” protests against Trump's assault on the Constitution, demonstrating that Americans can still be mobilised in support of something they hold dear. By contrast, while there has been ample media coverage of the administration's gutting of the agencies monitoring climate change, pollution, the weather and other environment-related issues, the devastation hasn't produced any major protests.