Climate Change is Happening
October 15, 2018
Share:CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL: While providing the populous with entertainment via brouhaha like that surrounding the recent SCOTUS nomination, the administration continues to ignore what many believe to be the most important issue facing us today. That, of course, is climate change. That climate change is real, supported by an overwhelming majority of climatologists, earth and planetary scientists, and members of most all the other scientific disciplines, and has been established.
The GOP as a whole and the entirety of the current administration are at odds with the rest of the world in their disbelief surrounding climate change. I’ve noted that, over the past couple of years, the GOP has grudgingly come around to the fact that our climate is indeed changing, and not in good ways. But they still reject the world’s scientific community’s conclusion that human activity is the chief cause of global warming, and as a result, are ignoring the consequences. They believe that they can continue to increase profits for big corporations by enacting major rollbacks of environmental regulations and expansion of fossil fuel use.
Photo by American Public Power Association on Unsplash
That philosophical approach was prevalent for most of the 20th century, but this time, already deep into the 21st century, the stakes are higher. Much higher. The very health of mankind and all the flora and fauna of earth is at stake.
MAYBE THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT IT? This administration itself has determined that the average temperature of the planet will increase by 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That is a huge temperature increase and will result in a radically different environment than that which humans evolved in. And the year 2100 is not as far away as it seems. Eighty-two years. The author and most of the readers of this letter will be dead by then. But your grandchildren and their children will still be here, trying desperately to cope with and correct the environmental disaster visited upon them by past generations.
Photo by Benjamin Kerensa on Unsplash
Where did this assessment originate? In the EPA? NASA? No, it is contained in a draft environmental impact report developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This report was written to justify freezing federal fuel-efficiency standards that are designed to control greenhouse gases. But as the report illustrates, this is exactly opposite of the actions a sane and reasonable society would take.
WHAT CAN WE EXPECT? Among the likely consequences of this headlong rush to catastrophic climate change are predicted mass human migrations, enormous floods, mega-wildfires, crop failures, mass starvation, pandemics, ecological collapse on a global scale, and of course, wars. Truly, never in human history have such simultaneous tragedies been suffered by our species…and they are of our own doing. We have hatched, and continue to feed, the greatest existential threat to the human race ever.
Our thanks to W. Kelly
But our administration’s take is that since the global temperature is going to increase anyway, we should focus on maximum short-term profits. The sensible course, applying our brains and efforts to mitigating the already-baked-in effects, is ignored. Rather, we do the opposite, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide through continued, and in fact, accelerated use of fossil fuels.
Our thanks to M. Benioff
An old adage seems appropriate here, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging”.
But maybe one that is even better suited is one my grandfather was fond of reminding me, “You can’t take it with you.”
Our thanks to C. Barks
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