We’re getting a weather break, but Kansas and Missouri can’t ignore our hotter future

Hot enough for ya?

Unless you’re a sucker for misery, the answer to that question is almost certainly yes. Until Wednesday’s thunderstorms brought a brief respite to parts of the region, Kansas and Missouri had been wilting under seemingly endless days of oppressive heat and humidity. It got so bad that thousands of cattle died in Kansas feedlots last week, drawing attention from media outlets around the world.

That die-off raises two issues for area residents: Is all this deadly heat the result of climate change, or are we just having a particularly intense summer? And if it is the result of climate change, what are our elected representatives in Kansas and Missouri doing about it?

The answer to the first question is possibly, maybe. We can’t know whether climate change has caused any particular weather incident — but we do know that as the world warms, we’ll see more events that threaten both the lives and economic well-being of Midwesterners.

“What is clear is that the livestock (and human, for that matter) heat stress issue will become increasingly challenging for livestock farmers to deal with, as the world warms,” one expert told The Guardian.

So: What are our elected officials doing to fix this problem?

Not much. In fact, the Republicans who do most of the governing in Kansas and Missouri seem more interested in blocking progress than in finding solutions to climate change — assuming they’re even willing to acknowledge the problem exists.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, for one, has aggressively challenged President Joe Biden’s modest efforts to clamp down on the greenhouse emissions that are causing the warming. In May, he joined a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s decision to let California resume setting strict pollution standards for cars and trucks sold in the state. And earlier this month, Schmitt announced his opposition to a proposed rule from the federal Securities and Exchange Commission that would require publicly traded companies to disclose climate risks to their investors.

All of this was done in the name of Missouri consumers, of course. “Rather than take steps to lower gas prices and curb inflation, the federal government wants to implement new burdensome requirements on companies that serve no purpose except virtue signaling,” Schmitt said.

Things are little better in Kansas, where state Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican and former meteorologist for Fox4 in Kansas City, has emerged as a “very important” member of the GOP caucus — and has used his platform to push back against the scientific consensus that humans are responsible for heating up the planet.

“‘Climate change’, as used by many people today … is not about climate; it’s about a political ideology,” Thompson has written.

There isn’t enough space here to explain why Thompson is wrong to oppose the conclusions shared by the vast and overwhelming majority of climate scientists. The point here is that his error and influence will have serious consequences. And that means that he — and Schmitt, and a whole host of Republicans who oppose climate action — are failing at their jobs.

As the cattle die-off suggests, global warming won’t be solved by turning up the thermostat in the summer. It’s a threat to the health and financial well-being of the people and businesses. An April report from the Congressional Research Service suggests that a hotter planet will likely make workers less productive, render companies more vulnerable to catastrophic weather events, discourage business investment and generally make things more expensive.

Kansas and Missouri won’t escape those terrible outcomes.

So when Schmitt talks about protecting Missouri consumers, he’s dead wrong: Climate change will make life more costly, and good jobs harder to find. When Thompson rails against “political ideology,” it suggests he’s more interested in bad ideas than the welfare of living, breathing people. They’re doing their constituents a profound harm that will last for generations. Nobody wins.