Direct and indirect dangers from global warming are so grave that
the issue should be near the top of the U.S. campaign agenda,
instead of being downplayed or denied.
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| The image of the Earth rising over the surface of the moon, a photograph taken by the first U.S. astronauts to orbit the moon. (Photo:NASA/cc) |
President
Obama calls it “terrifying”
and the greatest long-term threat facing the world. Three hundred seventy-five
of the world’s top experts just
warned of “severe and long-lasting consequences” for the planet if America’s
next president drops the ball. Yet only 19 percent of registered voters say it’s a top
issue; Hillary Clinton increasingly ducks the topic,
and Donald Trump characteristically dismisses it all as a “hoax.”
The issue,
of course, is global warming. While reporters offer endless stories about
Clinton’s emails and fainting spells, and Trump makes up new lies faster than
fact-checkers can swat them down, few people in politics or the media are
talking about the accelerating effects of climate change.
Global
warming isn’t just a theory any more. NASA recently reported that
this August tied with July as the “warmest month ever recorded,” following 11
straight months that set new global heat records. Since 2000, the Earth has
experienced 14 of the 15
hottest years on record.
Relentless
burning of fossil fuels and release of other heat-trapping gases has already
increased the Earth’s average surface temperature by about 1 degree Celsius
relative to the late Nineteenth Century. And that’s just for starters.
“Even if
every nation in the world complies with the [2015] Paris Agreement [on
climate], the world will heat up by as much as 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 —
not the 1.5 to 2 degrees promised in the pact’s preamble,” according to climate
activist Bill McKibben.
Even
today’s limited warming is wreaking havoc all across the globe. After storms in
Louisiana last month dumped two feet of rain in 48 hours — killing 13 people,
damaging more than 60,000 homes and businesses and causing $9 billion in
economic losses — scientists reported that
“climate change played a very clear and quantifiable role” in causing the
disaster.
In other
regions, from parched California to fire-ravaged
Alberta, warming has caused record droughts, raging forest fires and
billions of dollars more in damage. In the eastern Mediterranean, the worst drought of
the last 900 years is causing hunger and widespread social disruption, contributing to mass
migration and devastating conflicts like the wars in Syria and Libya.
Warming is bringing
disease vectors, like mosquitos that carry malaria and Zika virus,
ever deeper into formerly temperate areas. Warming and related ocean
acidification are also “bleaching” coral reefs and wiping out fisheries.
Warming is rapidly thinning Arctic ice and putting polar ecosystems at risk. As
glaciers melt, sea levels are rising rapidly, inundating not only island
nations but highly developed coastlines like the Eastern seaboard of
the United States.
Worse Down
the Road
And all
this is just a start. An open letter just
issued by 375 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and its foreign
affiliates, including 30 Nobel laureates, warns that “rapid warming of the planet
increases the risk of crossing climatic points of no return, possibly setting
in motion large-scale ocean circulation changes, the loss of major ice sheets,
and species extinctions. The climatic consequences of exceeding such thresholds
are not confined to the next one or two electoral cycles. They have lifetimes
of many thousands of years.”
They also
took a direct swipe at Trump, saying “it is of great concern that the
Republican nominee for President has advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris
Accord. . . . Such a decision would make it far more difficult to develop
effective global strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change. The
consequences of opting out of the global community would be severe and
long-lasting – for our planet’s climate and for the international credibility
of the United States.”
Surveys
show that Republican are twice as likely as last year to express doubts about
the existence of global warming, According to University
of Michigan researchers, one factor may be their presidential candidate’s
oft-repeated insistence that global warming is “a total, and very expensive,
hoax!”
Clinton is
squarely on record as acknowledging the challenge of global warming, and
advocates massive investment in solar energy to make the United States a “clean
energy superpower.” Evidently fearful of being branded “anti-jobs” or
“pro-tax,” however, she has markedly
downplayed discussion of the issue since beating Bernie Sanders
in the Democratic primary.
Please continue this article here: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/09/22/dangerous-denial-global-warming
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