Graphic courtesy of IPCC Climate Change 2023 Report

Well, July was one of the top five warmest-ever in Maine. The humidity has been, as the TV meteorologists say, tropical. And practically relentless. Except for the past couple of days, same thing in August.

It used to be hot and humid like this over a handful of three- or four-day spells in any given summer. In recent years, it’s happening more or less all summer. And wildfire-smoke haze seems to be a summer weather fixture now. It was practically unheard of here before the last few years.

It is well-known that these effects are expected in a changing climate; that climates are changing worldwide; and that human activities are primarily responsible for it.

Nonetheless, there is still a sizable number of people who deny that any such thing as human-induced environmental trouble even exists. “Mankind CANNOT kill the planet,” a bellicose reader, or possibly Russian troll, wrote to me a few years ago. As it happens I cannot forget this sentence, try as I might.

Planetwide pollution and habitat destruction have led directly to environmental disasters, climate change and mass extinction of species. There is no doubt about this, according to the climate scientists. But the denial — which is the denial of reality itself — has been persistent and discouraging.

When Rachel Carson gave us “Silent Spring” in 1962, a sort of general awakening to the extent to which humans could and were damaging the Earth took place. Mind you, Carson’s news was not new to people who had been paying attention. It was well-known in the 1800s that humans were carelessly and irresponsibly wiping out whole populations of animals and plants. By the 1970s the Clean Water and Clean Air acts and the Environmental Protection Agency (formed with the support of President Nixon) resulted. Some moral progress there, it seemed.

Then in the 1980s, the oil companies began systematically lying about what carbon emissions do in the atmosphere. This kicked off decades of denial of global warming, the resulting climate change and the destructive effects that human activities are having on the Earth.

As the decades of denial have rolled on, it looks to me like it has devolved through at least four phases:

• Phase 1: Global warming is not real. The Earth is not warming. It’s a hoax.

• Phase 2: Global warming is not real, but the Earth may be warming due to natural climate cycles. Natural cycles are nothing to worry about.

• Phase 3: Even if climate change is real and influenced by human activities, which it’s not, it costs too much money to do anything about. 3A: Anyway climate change will create many moneymaking opportunities.

• Phase 4: Even if climate change is real and human activities are influencing it — which they’re not — it doesn’t matter.

I first saw a concrete sign of Phase 4 about seven years ago. A biology professor wrote an op-ed in which he argued that there is no need to be worried about the mass extinction event that most biologists agree is underway right now (directly influenced by human activities) because extinction events are a natural component of biological evolution.

Like most people who don’t know what they’re talking about when pronouncing upon complex moral problems, he spoke as if the solution to any putative problem were self-evident. He denied that humans have any responsibility for saving species because extinctions are part of natural cycles. We just do what we do, and nature does what it does, and everything goes along in its Darwinian way. What’s the problem?

It occurs to him toward the end of his piece that, well, climate change might have “drastic effects” on people. (The animals don’t matter.) He then proceeds to list some effects, which are harrowing, but still, we should not feel any particular worry about this because: “The solution is simple: moderation. While we should feel no remorse about altering our environment, there is no need to clear-cut forests for McMansions on 15-acre plots of crabgrass-blanketed land. We should save whatever species and habitats can be easily rescued … refrain from polluting waterways, limit consumption of fossil fuels and rely more on low-impact renewable-energy sources.” Problem solved!

This is like a speech by a novice sophist in a Socratic dialogue. The next thing to happen would be that Socrates starts asking questions. Within a few paragraphs, reality-based logic sends the sophist’s notion that moral concerns are “simple” fluttering like a skyscraper of playing cards into the wind.

Nonetheless, seven years later “it doesn’t matter” reasoning is infecting climate change stories. “(I’m) not trying to deny that our climate may be changing,” one commenter on a recent climate change story wrote. “I am, however, not overly worried about it doing so.” He went on to wonder why no one wants to talk about “the potential benefits to a warmer climate.”

But the changing climate, and our responsibility for it, does matter. And this is why: Climate change is going to lead directly to untold suffering.

Sea level is going to keep rising, and coastal flooding is going to keep wrecking homes, businesses and ecosystems.

Big storms with high wind gusts and torrential rain (like the ones that destroyed roads and homes in Maine this winter) are going to occur more frequently.

Droughts are going to get more intense and lead to famines.

Higher surface temperatures are going to intensify the droughts and make some low countries uninhabitable. People are going to flee these drought- and heat-stricken places and move to places with sufficient shelter, food and water.

This movement of populations is going to lead to conflict and wars. It’s already happening in Central America and parts of Africa.

Contrary to the red-in-tooth-and-claw wisdom of the biology professor, extinguishing animal species matters too. Any ecologist can explain better than I can how destroying habitat destroys ecosystems that depend on each other, and that we depend on. Destroying ecosystems means destroying ourselves.

Denying responsibility for inducing catastrophic climate change looks like the current phase of the moral nihilism launched by the oil companies. Whether it’s the last phase, I don’t know.

But even now, climate change denial has to be a finalist for a lifetime-achievement Darwin Award.

Dana Wilde lives in Troy. You can contact him at dwilde.naturalist@gmail.com. His book “Winter: Notes and Numina from the Maine Woods” is available from North Country Press. Backyard Naturalist appears the second and fourth Thursdays each month.