The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have arrived, driving Suburbans. Thanos is pissed. The Avengers won’t rescue us. We could save ourselves, but that seems highly unlikely. Too many special interests. Too many fat cats. Too much greed.

The price of our reckless and persistent rush to exploit and burn hydrocarbons is considerable: war; conquest; famine; and death. Too hyperbolic? I don’t believe so, and neither do the Horsemen.

Too much biblical flooding. Too many great balls of fire. Too many superstorms, bomb cyclones, atmospheric rivers, heat domes, prolonged drought, and billion-dollar disasters.

Our superheating of the atmosphere has and is changing the world in a way that is far less hospitable. The ass-kicking has just begun.

One of the most obvious consequences of global heating is an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather. The National Climate Assessment has noted the number of heat waves, heavy downpours, and major hurricanes in the United States is increasing. It’s taking a considerable toll.

It’s only the teens in July and already this summer:

Days of devastating flooding across the Midwest destroyed homes, roads, public facilities, and crucial infrastructure.

A wildfire near a popular Oregon vacation destination ignited June 25, forcing hundreds of people out of homes and businesses. The week before, thousands fled their homes in New Mexico as two fast-moving wildfires approached. Two people were killed, and officials have estimated some 1,500 structures were destroyed or damaged.

A few days before July 4, some 13,000 people were ordered to evacuate in northern California as firefighters battled a raging wildfire amid scorching temperatures. With months left to go in what is expected to be an active fire season, the number of burned acres this year is already more than 40% higher than the 10-year average for this time of year.

(A recent report from the Global Forest Watch initiative at the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland found wildfires scorched nearly 20 million acres of forests in Canada last year, an area nearly the size of 27 Rhode Islands. All that burning produced about 3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, almost four times more than the global aviation sector for the year.)

A June 26 tornado tore through Cumberland and Lincoln, R.I., and Attleboro, Mass., knocking down trees and power lines.

Hurricane Beryl became the first Atlantic June hurricane to hit Category 4 status and the first storm before September to go from tropical depression to major hurricane in less than 48 hours. It turned into a Category 5 storm before the Fourth of July, becoming only the second Atlantic storm of such strength to be recorded in July. It left an “Armageddon-like” trail of devastation in Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Scientists said Beryl was supercharged by “absolutely crazy” ocean temperatures that are likely to fuel further violent storms in the coming months.

Some 33 million people across the southern Plains, lower Mississippi Valley, and the Southeast faced extreme heat, as temperatures felt like 100 degrees Fahrenheit or more.

About 34 million people were placed under heat alerts, as warnings were issued from the southern tip of Texas across Arizona and Nevada, and up through the center of California to the northern part of the state.

On July 6, the National Weather Service reported some type of extreme heat or advisory for nearly 133 million people — mostly in western states with triple-digit heat and temperatures 15-30 degrees Fahrenheit higher than average. This long-running heat wave has already broken records and sparked dozens of wildfires. The National Weather Service deemed it “potentially historic.”

This week much of southern New England has been under a heat advisory.

The apocalyptic news doesn’t end there. Experts have warned this summer is likely to be another record-smashing season, with the potential to topple 2023 as the world’s hottest recorded year.

Not only was 2023 the warmest year in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 173-year climate record (1850-2023), it was the warmest by plenty, beating 2016, the next warmest year, by a record-setting margin of 0.27 of a degree Fahrenheit.

Earth’s average land and ocean surface temperature in 2023 was 2.12 degrees Fahrenheit (1.18 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average. The average global temperature for 2023 exceeded the pre-industrial — before the burning of fossil fuels — average by 2.43 degrees Fahrenheit (1.35 degrees Celsius).

Phoenix, this country’s hottest city and Arizona’s capital, has become nearly unlivable in the summer, according to a Guardian story published in 2022, when 2016 was still the hottest year on record. The lead says it all: “A surge in heat-related deaths amid record-breaking summer temperatures offers a glimpse into the future and a stark warning.”

This year, the city just experienced its hottest June on record, and has already suffered 175 possible heat deaths.

Last year, 645 people died in Greater Phoenix from heat-related causes, that number surging by 50% and breaking a grim record that had only been set a year earlier.

Heat is the most deadly weather-related disaster in the United States, outpacing the number of people killed by hurricanes by 8 to 1. Extreme heat increases the rates of cardiovascular, respiratory, and renal diseases, and can overwhelm power supplies and health care facilities.

The 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the past decade. May was the hottest on record globally, and the 12th consecutive month that records for average monthly temperatures were broken.

On May 15, three Florida locations — Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Key West — experienced both a record for the warmest low and a record for the warmest high. At 96 degrees, it was the hottest day in Miami since Sept. 13, 2023. Fort Lauderdale’s peak heat index was 109 degrees, and Key West had a dew point of 82 degrees, which created a feels-like temperature of 114 degrees.

Floods could leave coastal communities in states such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Florida unlivable in two to three decades, according to a Union of Concerned Scientists report published June 25.

The report noted sea level rise, a major symptom of the climate crisis, will disrupt the daily life of millions, as hundreds of U.S. homes, schools, and government installations will face frequent and repeated flooding by 2050.

In less than six years, by 2030, the number of critical buildings and facilities at risk of routine and repeat flooding along the U.S. coast is expected to grow by 20% compared to 2020 conditions, according to the report.

In the face of all this misery and destruction, four of the world’s biggest banks — Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo — recently left the Equator Principles, a set of minimum industry standards and safeguards for financial institutions to address environmental and social risks in countries where they finance fossil fuel and mining projects.

“The move is part of an alarming trend among banks headquartered in the US of backpedaling on commitments on the climate and to vulnerable communities affected by their financing deals,” according to The Guardian.

The March 5 story reported Bank of America has removed bans on financing coal and Arctic drilling projects. JPMorgan Chase has introduced an “energy mix” for calculating its financed emissions, which will include renewable energy and make it harder to assess the environmental impact of projects.

The story also noted that between 2016 and 2022 these four too-big-to-fail banks invested a combined $1.4 trillion in fossil fuel extraction. Second homes, pricey cars, private jets, megayachts, RVs, and expensive vacations are the priority. The well-being of others gets in the way of self-indulgence.

We lead by example, and, unfortunately, our chief export is greed.

At least 16 of the 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries are reportedly involved in some 50 major new oil and gas onshore and offshore projects. Oil production in Latin America and the Caribbean, which stood at 8 million barrels a day in 2022, will grow by 5.8 million barrels a day to 13.8 by 2028, according to the International Energy Agency.

Non-OPEC countries are strengthening their foothold in fossil fuels, because they believe they have a right to enrich themselves in the same way wealthy nations, such as the United States, have.

Did I mention we are also too cruel? The policy of one of our country’s two major political parties solely revolves around deepening people’s sense of shared victimhood. This tiresome victimization narrative is built with fear and hatred. It solves nothing, further divides, and grows inequality.

A month before May’s brutal heat, Florida’s brutal governor signed a law preventing the state’s municipalities from creating heat protections for workers. The legislation, which went into effect July 1, was reportedly in response to Miami-Dade County farmworkers’ efforts to enshrine rights to mandatory rest breaks, access to water and shade, and other heat protections. The law also bans municipalities from giving preference to employers based on their heat-exposure policies.

Last June, the equally depraved governor of Texas signed a similar bill into law. Last month, a heat dome brought triple-digit temperatures to the Lone Star State. In recent years the same governor has prohibited municipalities from enacting bans on methane (natural gas) in new construction and has vowed to exclude renewable energy from economic incentive programs.

During the 2022 election cycle, he accepted $7.5 million from the fossil fuel industry.

Last year, Nevada’s sheriff-turned-governor vetoed a bill, with bipartisan support, that would have required two of the state’s fastest growing counties to adopt heat-mitigation priorities into their development plans. He claimed the legislation would have created more red tape. He has accepted campaign donations from utilities that provide home methane for heating and cooking. He also withdrew drought-stricken Nevada from the U.S. Climate Alliance.

Not to be undone by its despicable government colleagues, the six Supreme Court justices who represent the desires of right-wing special interests recently overturned an important precedent, the Chevron doctrine, that for the past 40 years has guided the work of federal government in critical areas such as public health, wildlife protection, and the climate crisis.

The Supreme Court’s decision sidelines government experts who work to protect wildlife, clean air and water, and the environment. The decision upends four decades of precedent and practice that will weaken federal power to regulate pollution.

Scientists, biologists, doctors, toxicologists, epidemiologists, and climatologists aren’t needed when the majority of the Supreme Court works at the behest of the rich and powerful. The decision paves the way for the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and other government agencies to be replaced by Federalist Society spinoffs.

On the same late-June day when they kicked knowledge to the curb, the six justices also tossed compassion and empathy into the trash bin, ruling that cities in the West can criminalize unhoused people sleeping outside even when they lack access to shelter. The nasty ruling strayed from an earlier decision, which said a ban without providing shelter was “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Cruelty is the point, though.

“The decision stands to broadly affect how American cities approach homelessness and could lead to more jurisdictions passing laws to ticket, fine and jail people for living outside, marking a significant erosion of unhoused people’s rights,” The Guardian reported.

In defending their cruelty, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote: “Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it … A handful of federal judges cannot begin to ‘match’ the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding ‘how best to handle’ a pressing social question like homelessness.”

The ideology of a handful of federal judges, though, is more than sufficient to match the collective wisdom of science when it comes to the climate crisis, and women’s health.

The six-pack of bribed justices and the trio of hateful governors represent this country’s infestation of feral fat cats who don’t care about the people they consider society’s peons, which is most of us. They only care about boosting the profits of major business interests and protecting the fossil fuel industry — no matter the damage done or those hurt, or even killed.

Rhode Island’s population of fat cats isn’t rabid, but it most certainly isn’t proactive when it comes to addressing the climate crisis and the societal inequity it creates. They stall any meaningful action. They like to keep studying even though we have the answers to the test. It’s a less vulgar way of protecting the Establishment.

But kicking the problem into the future isn’t a solution. It’s a dereliction of duty, and morally bankrupt.

(This is the best Rhode Island could do this year to address the climate crisis: A new law (H7246A and S2043A) adds data about climate change, sea level rise, and coastal resiliency to the list of issues that should be considered by Rhode Island Commerce and the Division of Planning as part of the creation of the state’s long-term economic development vision and policy. Those issues should be more than just considered. In fact, we shouldn’t need legislation to do the obvious.)

If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels in a dramatic way, the frequency and intensity of heat waves and extreme weather will continue to worsen, leading to more hunger, water shortages, illness, economic losses, forced migration, and death.

For instance, families are likely to see their electrical bills increase nearly 8% from June to September to an average cost of $719, compared with $661 during the same period last year, according to projections from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

Beyond this year, the climate crisis will reduce future global income by nearly 20%, with the poorest areas and those least responsible for supercharging the atmosphere taking the biggest financial hit, according to a study published in April.

Climate change’s economic bite in how much people make is already locked in at about $38 trillion annually by 2049, according to researchers at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. By 2100 the financial cost could hit twice what previous studies estimate, they noted

“Our analysis shows that climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world, also in highly-developed ones such as Germany, France and the United States,” according to scientist Leonie Wenz, who led the study. “These near-term damages are a result of our past emissions. We will need more adaptation efforts if we want to avoid at least some of them. And we have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately — if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century.”

The study’s authors said their research “clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering non-economic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity.”

The end game to our grisly parade of ignorance, selfishness, and cruelty is offered by Peter Wohlleben in his book “The Hidden Life of Trees”: “An organism that is too greedy and takes too much without giving anything in return destroys what it needs for life and dies out.”

Note: Exhaust fumes are mostly invisible and easy to ignore, but if the Suburbans’ tail pipes were directed back into the gasoline-guzzling vehicles, each Horseman would be dead in minutes. We selfishly believe our shared (with each other and all other life on the planet) atmosphere can magically accept an infinite amount of toxic gases and soot and nothing will change.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.