Why 2020 Will Be the First Election at the End of the World

Are the political system and institutions of the United States strong enough to confront the climate crisis?

The First Election at the End of the World There is no beach where there once was a beach. There is a strip of sand that can hardly be called a beach, and on a cool afternoon at the beginning of September, seven kids were splashing through the waters at the edge of Grand Traverse Bay in that part of Lake Michigan that cuts into the lower half of the state of Michigan, providing a pinkie finger to the state's mitten configuration. Not far from where there once was a beach, you can see a dock submerged just below the surface. The water is so clear you can count the boards. This is where Lake Michigan had come to rest at the end of the summer of 2019. According to the Army Corps of Engineers, water levels in the Great Lakes hit record highs in 2019, and the combined levels of Lakes Michigan and Huron was thirty inches higher than its customary average in August. This is a consequence of heavier than usual rainfall, and then a heavier than usual snowfall, resulting in a heavier than usual snowmelt that combined with another unusually rainy spring. The lakes rose because of a combination of exacerbated weather events.   Traverse City and the surrounding area lost more than a beach and a dock. In June, Clinch Park downtown flooded. The boardwalk along the Boardman River was completely underwater. Parking lots near the lake were eroded from below and collapsed. Picturesque, century-old shanties in the Fishtown section of Leelanau County were caught between rising water in canals and rivers and higher lake water and seemed in danger of falling into the lake. These conditions were general all over the vast Great Lakes region. More water means higher and more powerful waves. More powerful waves means more flooding. As far back as May, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York warned residents around Lake Ontario to prepare themselves for floods and reminded them that, in 2017, wind-driven waves and high water had caused tens of millions of dollars' worth of damage there. The same thing happened last May in Rochester and elsewhere along the lake. Nature has a very distinct way of enforcing the consequences of human behavior.  Read the Full Story 'One Grotesque Irony After Another': Inside the Rise and Fall of Gawker 2.0 On July 12, 2018, at the law offices of Ropes & Gray in a midtown Manhattan high-rise near Rockefeller Center, attorneys and bidders gathered for a bankruptcy auction. Up for sale: the domain name and online archives of Gawker, the once-mighty website whose know-it-all attitude and everyone's-a-target modus operandi helped define the New York media landscape in the 2000s. Read the Full Story The Super-Warm, Wind-Blocking Coat You Can Wear With a Suit There are times when you have to sacrifice style for more functional concerns like staying warm and dry—that's something we actually used to believe. Not so. Especially not today, when even genuinely classic-looking pieces can hide a whole lot of technical know-how under the hood. Case in point: Uniqlo U's BlockTech duffel coat. Read the Full Story Watchmen Fans Found a Mysterious Document That Details Everything You Need to Know After the Comics Ended Watchmen is not just a comic book. Fans of the sprawling 1986 series love Alan Moore's story not only because it's an exceptional imagining of an awful reality of super-powered vigilantes run amuck, but also because the canvas of Watchmen stretches far beyond the pages of the comics. Read the Full Story Robert Ballard Found the Titanic. Will He Find Amelia Earhart Next? Robert Ballard sits behind the control desk of the E/V Nautilus, his 64-meter research ship. It's just after sundown in early August and they're docked near Nikumaroro, a tiny island in the South Pacific halfway between New Guinea and Hawaii. The crew just dropped down the robot ROV Hercules into the black ocean, where it will crawl along 1,000 feet below, transmitting back footage of the still sea floor. Read the Full Story Ted Bundy Said An Entity Made Him Murder. These Ghost Hunters Went Searching For It. If the last time you watched Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures was before you cut the cable cord, then you probably have vague memories of small household items going bump, said adventurers running away from things, and the occasional demon shouting through several dimensions, futility coming through as a staticky muffle on a fancy ghost walkie-talkie. God help us, Ghost Adventures is not that show anymore.  Read the Full Story   Follow Us     Unsubscribe  Privacy Notice   esquire.com ©2019 Hearst Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Email Privacy, 300 W 57th St., Fl. 19 (sta 1-1), New York, NY 10019