Joshua Partlow

In the western United States, particularly in fire-prone areas, people have become well versed at preparing to flee. They’re experts at using the tools and technology for monitoring a wildfire’s advance; they consult the Watch Duty app as often as checking the time. They know the three levels of evacuation—Ready, Set, Go—and many perform a running calculation of how much time they might need to get to safety.
On Saturday afternoon, Rita Gregovich was following that script.

James Story, America’s last chargé d’affaires in Venezuela before the embassy closed in 2019, left after the foreign minister passed along a message. The warning was stark, Story told me: If he stayed, he might be murdered.
When American diplomats raised the flag at the embassy in March, for the first time in seven years, they stood outside a building that had been festering in the tropical heat and taken over by black mold.

The Conjunto Residencial Belo Horizonte, twin apartment towers in the Venezuelan state of La Guaira, stood 16 stories high and offered sweeping views of the Caribbean Sea. Erick Rosas, a few weeks shy of his college graduation, was living with his family on the third floor, but when the shaking started on Wednesday, he was visiting his uncle, about 15 miles up the coast.

Summer has begun—which is to say, wildfires in the West are chasing residents from their homes, the snowpack has dwindled to near-record lows in several states, drought is spreading, and temperatures are regularly exploring new heights. Yet America does not seem to be sweating climate change. You could call it “climate hushing,” as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and others do, or a “worry gap,” as one study has. Whatever you call it, America’s interest in talking about climate change is at an ebb.

Tornadoes did not hit the nation’s capital yesterday, and many meteorologists on the internet are extremely sorry. “What a HORRIBLE forecast by meteorologists—especially myself,” Matthew Cappucci, of the weather app MyRadar, posted on X yesterday after the tornado warnings that prompted schools, businesses, and museums to close across the Washington region had fizzled into your average rainy day.