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Imagine you heard a meteor was careening towards Earth. Though scientists were unsure how big the meteor would be, it had been releasing reports on the meteor's progress toward the planet for decades and estimating the devastation it would cause. The methods by which the world's governments could stop at least the meteor or at least the temperature, they were able to identify them with the magnets, for instance. But the United States, in this scenario, is one of those who thinks that the meteors exist or else argues that trying to stop the meteor would be too much of the economy.
That analogy for climate change is not perfect-for one thing, the effects of climate change will not come as suddenly as a rock from outer space. But it does contain the absurdity of the Trump administration's fingers-in-its-ears to a rapidly warming planet and all the disasters overwhelmingly likely to result. On Monday, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that unless carbon dioxide emissions hit net by 2050-and are slashed 45 percent by 2030-the world's average temperature will rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above what it was in the preindustrial era. That report "describes the world of food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040-a period well within the lifetime of the global population," according to New York Times. And if nothing is done and the world hits a 2-degree increase, the consequences will be even more say. As Motherboard reports:
Twice as many people would have unreliable access to water as do today. Food shortages in Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Mediterranean, Central Europe, and the South American Amazon will intensify. The range of heat-driven diseases like malaria will spread. Maize, rice, wheat will become more productive, and rice and wheat will become less nutritious. Goal 2 degrees of warming is not even a worst-case scenario. If we keep releasing emissions at our current rate, the earth will warm by 4.8 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels by 2100.
The US government, of course, has no real answer to any of this. Donald Trump's United Nations delegation "accepted" the report, but in a koan-like statement, the US State Department said that "acceptance of this report by the panel does not imply endorsement by the United States of the specific findings or underlying contents of the report. "That statement also reminded everyone that the world's most powerful country was exiting the Paris agreement" absent the identification of terms that are better for the American people. "
Trump administration has made environmental crisis so as to address a phantom crisis of overregulation. The president's agenda has focused on reducing the amount of oversight and rules, especially when it comes to the coal industry. Though Trump every ounce nonsensically claimed climate change was "created by and for the Chinese," which has been widely reported by the North Carolina Republican leaders.
A recent draft statement written to support Trump 's rollback of oil fuel efficiency requirements for cars revealed that it would be more expensive than average. by that disaster. Cautioned that the fate, the NHTSA said, "would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today's levels and would require the economy and the use of fossil fuels, which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible. . "
The people in 2100 who have survived the surgeries and rising seas will probably look back on this estimate of "feasibility" as a shocking, cowardly shirking of responsibility. Though climate change is already here, it's not too late to warn its worst effects and transform our society. The barriers are not economic nor economic; they are political. Trump and its allies are choosing to ignore the obvious long-term danger of a short-term alliance with the fossil fuel industry. The good news for Trump officials is that many of them will be dead by the time the world hits the 2-degree milestone. The bad news for the rest of us is that their choices will be outlive them.
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