The Museum of Unnatural Disasters

PRESENTED BY THE REASON FOR THE SEASON

My pundit guess is that Trump popularity will pick up a few points going into Independence Day (everyone loves fireworks) and then will collapse to new lows during a summer of climate catastrophe. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) will keep Congress from acting, sacrificing another dozen “moderate” Republicans to the Trump auto-da-fe-cum-golpe. And millions of Americans will suffer during disaster without help from a crippled and corrupted federal government, as the world’s financiers shovel trillions of dollars into the fossil-fuel furnace.

The climate movement needs to do more organizing around climate-disaster preparedness. For electoral organizers, it means celebrating the commonality between Phoenix’s Rep. Yassamin Anasari (D-Ariz.), a pioneer in urban extreme heat preparedness, and Montana’s Sam Forstag, a DOGEd Forest Service smokejumper. For anti-authoritarian organizers, it means volunteering with the local Red Cross and mutual aid groups, in line with Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has launched a major campaign to prepare for our carbon summer, aptly named Danger Season, connecting the dots between the growing fossil-fueled threat and the deadly dismantling of scientific resilience.

In Washington, D.C., the Climate Action Campaign has been ringing the alarm with the Museum of Unnatural Disasters, a pop-up effort curated by Sam Hartman, an artist and survivor of Hurricane Helene, from June 3 through June 14 on the National Mall. There’s still time to volunteer!

Gabriel Matias Castilho describes the exhibits:

The real power of the Museum of Unnatural Disasters is in its programming, with events bringing elected officials together with scientists and survivors of fossil-fueled climate disasters:

• On June 3rd, climate science Ph.D. candidate Syl Foisy visited the museum’s launch at the conclusion of his 250-mile, 12-day march from New York City to the U.S. Capitol to call attention to the Trump regime’s assault on climate science before meeting with Congressional members of the Sustainable Energy & Environment Coalition.

• Also, Rep. Adeliita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) participated in a roundtable on deadly heat.

• On June 4th, Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), Sean Casten (D-Ill.), and Luz Rivas (D-Calif.) joined extreme weather survivors.

• On Monday, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) joined a rally to save NOAA with former principal deputy NOAA administrator Monica Medina and Craig McLean, former NOAA Assistant Administrator for Research.

So head down to the Mall and visit the Museum of Unnatural Disasters—or set up your own.

It’s also a busy day in Congress for climate hearings:

• This morning, the House Science Committee met with Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to review the Department of Energy’s FY2027 plans for its science portfolio, which involve killing all renewable energy and climate research and investing heavily in AI, nuclear, and fossil-fuel energy. House appropriators have marked up a DOE science budget that diverges from the administration proposal, rejecting the proposed gutting of the Offie of Electricity, climate research, and ARPA-E, but offering even more funds for AI and fossil-fuel programs.

• The Senate oversight hearing for the U.S. Department of Agriculture with Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is driven by the climate crisis, whether the topic is forestry, wildfires, fertilizer costs, or the collapse of the Great Plains wheat crop.

• The House Agriculture Committee invited agricultural perspectives on the future of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the Trump-negotiated successor to NAFTA. Mexico is facing extraordinary heat and drought while its subsistence farmers are threatened by the dumping of subsidized U.S. corn production.

• The rapid desertification of the West is the focus of a Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing, with the dry euphemism of “oversight of the Colorado River Basin, including its current hydrologic conditions and ongoing negotiations regarding post-2026 operations.” Interior official Andrea Travnicek, Bureau of Reclamation official David Palumbo, American Rivers executive director Tom Kiernan, and local officials and lobbyists from Utah, Wyoming, and California are testifying about the fossil-fueled Colorado River “system crash” and failure of the negotiations of how to allocate the disappearing water supply. The senators and witnesses have been doing their best to avoid any mention of global warming.

• The hearing followed a 9:30 am markup of 33 forest, wildfire, mining, public lands, national parks, hydropower, water infrastructure, Holocaust education, and other energy and natural resource bills at 9:30 am. The bills either dance around the edges of the Western climate crisis or exacerbate it—most notably S. 140, the “Wildfire Prevention Act,” which would “prevent” wildfires by clear-cutting forests.

• House appropriators are completing the markup of the $100 billion Fiscal Year 2027 Homeland Security bill, which includes $34 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, most of which is the $28.4 billion allocated for the Disaster Relief Fund. FY26 Disaster Relief Fund expenditures were $26.4 billion.

• The House Financial Services housing subcommittee holds a hearing on local needs in disaster recovery, specifically the Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program, which is funded by Congress on an ad-hoc basis in response to major climate disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. Witnesses include state officials from Texas and North Carolina.

• The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee reviews the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget with director Brian Nesvik, who opposes fish and wildlife. The proposed budget would gut the agency, including the elimination of the Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund, National Wildlife Refuge Fund, Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Fund, Multinational Species Conservation Fund, and State and Tribal Wildlife Grants.

• House Natural Resources is marking up four bills, including an urban bird habitat bill and legislation to open the city of Carlsbad to fracking (H.R. 7882).

Hearings on the Hill:

• 9:30 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
  Markup of 33 Forest, Wildfire, Mining, Public Lands, National Parks, Hydropower, Water Infrastructure, Holocaust Education, and Other Energy and Natural Resource Bills

• 10 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
  Oversight of the Colorado River Basin, including Post-2026 Operations Negotiations

• 10 AM: Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Proposed Fiscal Year 2027 Budget

• 10 AM: Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee
  Oversight of the U.S. Department of Agriculture

• 10 AM: House Financial Services Committee
     Housing and Insurance Subcommittee
  Examining Local Needs in Disaster Recovery

• 10 AM: House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
  Overview of the Department of Energy’s Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request

• 10 AM: House Agriculture Committee
  Agricultural Perspectives on the Future of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement

• 10 AM: House Natural Resources Committee
  Markup of Local Communities & Bird Habitat Stewardship Act, Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation Land Exchange Act, and Bills for Carlsbad Fracking and Yuma Proving Ground Expansion

• 10 AM: House Appropriations Committee
  Full Committee Markup of FY27 Homeland Security Bill, Continued

Climate Action Today:

• 9 AM: Climate Action Campaign
  Museum of Unnatural Disasters

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