YES, IT IS REAL
The vast majority of the scientific community agrees: climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing devastating harm here in the United States and all around the globe.
To my mind, global climate change is the single greatest threat facing the planet. It poses an actual existential threat to our country and our world. We are the custodians of the earth, and it would be a moral disgrace if we left to future generations a planet that was unhealthy, dangerous, and increasingly uninhabitable. We must transform our energy system and drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is no alternative.
Ever since the Industrial Revolution began more than two hundred years ago, we have been burning increasing amounts of carbon-based fossil fuels—principally oil, natural gas, and coal—to heat our factories and homes, generate electricity, and power our vehicles. And for most of that time, we have been dumping the by-products of that combustion, some of which are highly toxic, into our atmosphere, our soil, and our waterways. Over the years, we have become better at scrubbing out certain pollutants, including sulfur oxides and particulates that contribute to acid rain and smog, but an incontrovertible fact remains: when we burn carbon-based fossil fuels, we release significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In fact, today, humans release between 35 billion and 40 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.
BY-PRODUCT: a secondary substance made in the production of something else
According to NASA scientists, in the past 650,000 years the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has never exceeded 300 ppm (parts per million). At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, carbon levels were about 280 ppm. Since then, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen, slowly at first, but at an increasing rate as we burned more and more fossil fuels. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the country’s premier atmospheric research facility, the carbon dioxide level crossed the 400 ppm threshold for the first time in 2013 and continues to rise by an average of 2.6 ppm every year. So what does this mean?
Carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas” that traps heat from the sun and earth in the atmosphere. The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the stronger the greenhouse effect, and the more the atmosphere and the oceans warm. This is hardly a new idea. Nor is it, as some would have you believe, a theory. In fact, scientists started connecting fuel emissions to the climate in the mid-1800s, and in 1917 Alexander Graham Bell used the now-popular term when he reasoned that with air pollution “we would gain some of the earth’s heat which is normally radiated into space.… We would have a sort of greenhouse effect,” turning the atmosphere into “a sort of hot-house.”
And while carbon dioxide accounts for 81 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, it is not the only problem. Methane, which is released during the extraction, transportation, and combustion of natural gas, oil, and coal, accounts for 11 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. But while it is a smaller slice of the overall greenhouse gas emissions pie, methane traps eighty-four times more heat, pound for pound over twenty years, than carbon dioxide does. Similarly, while nitrous oxide—also a by-product of fossil fuel combustion—accounts for just 6 percent of all greenhouse gas emission, it traps 289 times more heat than carbon dioxide. And certain synthetic fluorinated gases like hydrofluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons account for just 3 percent of the pie, but pound for pound, they trap tens of thousands of times more heat than carbon dioxide.
The results of dumping these heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere year after year are frighteningly clear. We are experiencing the hottest years on record. In 2016, July and August tied as the hottest months ever recorded on the planet. Sixteen of the seventeen hottest years have occurred since 2001.
Extreme heat waves have gripped large swaths of the planet, often with catastrophic results, especially for the elderly, the sick, and the poor. The deadliest heat wave ever recorded killed 72,210 people in Europe in 2003. A 2010 heat wave in Russia killed 55,700 people. In 2015, temperatures in India and Pakistan topped 117.7 degrees Fahrenheit and killed more than 3,477 people. In July 2016, the city of Basra, Iraq, reached 129 degrees—one of the highest temperatures ever recorded on the planet.
As temperatures rise, we’re seeing significant shrinking of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. In Antarctica alone, NASA estimates that 118 billion tonnes of ice is permanently lost each year, which is equivalent to a quarter of all the water in massive Lake Erie. But that is nothing compared with Greenland, which is losing 281 billion tonnes of ice a year. Alaska and Canada are each losing another seventy-five billion tonnes a year from melting glaciers. Where is all the water from that melted ice going?
The oceans have already risen by about eight inches since the beginning of the twentieth century. That might not sound like much, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts they could rise by as much as 6.6 feet by the end of this century. About 150 million Americans live along the coasts, and eleven of the world’s fifteen largest cities are in coastal areas. An August 2016 report by the online real estate database company Zillow said that rising sea levels by 2100 could claim up to 1.9 million homes, worth a total of $882 billion.
Rising oceans are already creating the world’s first “climate refugees.” Residents of the Maldives, a tiny nation made up of more than a thousand islands southeast of India, are abandoning some of the lower-lying islands as the ocean rises. Closer to home, residents of Isle de Jean Charles in southeastern Louisiana, most of whom are Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Native Americans, are preparing to leave the only place they have ever called home as their land disappears. In August 2016, the six hundred Inupiat villagers of Shishmaref voted to relocate their four-hundred-year-old Native Alaskan village, one of thirty-one Alaskan villages facing an imminent threat of destruction from erosion and flooding caused by climate change, according to the Arctic Institute.
Meanwhile, the oceans themselves are warming and becoming more acidified as they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These changes are disrupting important fisheries, threatening the food supply for about a billion people, and endangering fragile and important ecosystems like coral reefs, which are becoming bleached in the warm, acidic waters.
And all across the world, extreme weather disturbances are becoming more common, including hurricanes, torrential rainfalls, and severe flooding. In October 2015, Hurricane Patricia became the most powerful tropical cyclone ever measured in the Western Hemisphere, with maximum sustained winds of 215 miles per hour and gusts up to 247 miles per hour. This was just a few years after Hurricane Sandy killed 186 people and caused more than $68 billion in damages and lost economic output. Sandy was such an intense storm that NOAA had to come up with a new term: “superstorm.” And it is clear: warmer air means we can expect more superstorms.
The past five years have been the driest on record in California, forcing many towns to reduce water consumption by more than 30 percent. In 2015, more than half a million acres, or more than 5 percent of the state’s agricultural land, was left uncultivated because of the drought, robbing the state of $1.8 billion in economic activity and more than ten thousand jobs. Historic wildfires scorched 118,000 acres of land last year, more than double the five-year average. Extreme heat has sent dozens of people, mostly in low-income communities without air-conditioning, to an early death. And along their 840-mile coastline, Californians watch cautiously as the ocean rises, threatening communities and businesses.
Meanwhile, there is another aspect to climate change that should concern us all. I believe that climate change is our nation’s greatest national security threat. It is also the opinion of a growing number of leading national security experts, including many in the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Of course, there is no shortage of national security concerns, including international terrorism, ISIS, global poverty, health pandemics, and the belligerent actions of countries like Russia, North Korea, and China. But unlike these other threats, climate change cannot be thwarted with good intelligence work or stopped at a border or negotiated with or contained by economic sanctions. It cannot be beaten on a battlefield or bombed from the air. It has no vaccine or treatment. And yet, unless we act boldly, and within this very short window of opportunity, it will likely wreak havoc and destabilize whole nations and regions, with serious security ramifications for many countries, including the United States.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which includes more than thirteen hundred scientists from around the world, says that unless we drastically change course in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures will continue to rise by as much as five or ten degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. Some scientists believe that number is on the low side. What will this mean?
What this significant temperature increase will mean is more drought, more crop failures, and more famine. Drinking water, already a precious commodity in many areas, will become even scarcer. Millions of people will be displaced by rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and flooding. Tropical diseases like malaria, dengue, and yellow fever will spread into parts of the world where they don’t currently exist. All of this will likely lead to increased human suffering and death, but the situation will be even more dire.
The growing scarcity of basic human needs could well lead to perpetual warfare in regions around the world, as people fight over limited supplies of water, farmland, and other natural resources. A world in which we see mass migrations of people in search of food, water, and other basic needs is not going to be a safe or stable world. That’s not just my opinion—that is the opinion of leading national security experts in our country and throughout the world. Yes, climate change is our nation’s great national security threat.
And the sad truth is that the effects of climate change will fall especially hard upon the most vulnerable people in our country and throughout the world—the people who have the fewest resources to protect themselves and the fewest options when disaster strikes. According to the United Nations’ Institute for Environment and Human Security and the International Organization for Migration, up to 200 million people could be displaced by 2050 as a result of droughts, floods, and sea-level rise brought on by climate change. That is more than three times the total number of refugees in the world in 2016 who have fled for any reason, including dire poverty, war, and famine. Think about it. We have a major refugee crisis today. That crisis could become much, much worse in coming decades as a result of climate change.
I do not mean to paint a hopeless picture of a dystopian future over which we have no control, but Pope Francis was absolutely right when he said that the world is on a suicidal course with regard to climate change. Of course, we must not, we cannot, and we will not allow that to happen. We have to address this global crisis before it’s too late.
DYSTOPIA: an imaginary place or state where everything is bad usually because of environmental disaster or total government control
To me, family values mean leaving behind a planet that is livable for our children and grandchildren.
TWEET BY BERNIE SANDERS,
APRIL 18, 2017, 7:57 AM
While the global challenge of climate change is huge, there is no question in my mind that it can be addressed and effectively fought. There is also no question in my mind that the United States can and should lead the international effort. As a nation, we have the knowledge and the technology, which is growing more effective and affordable every day. With millions of people in our country unemployed, we certainly have the manpower. What we lack now is the political will, in a failure to acknowledge the severity of the crisis and act accordingly.
Solar panels and wind turbines that deliver energy are a beginning. Municipalities are making use of methane gas that comes from old landfills, and many dairy farmers are converting cow manure to electricity. In Iowa, more than 30 percent of electricity is generated by wind turbines. In Texas, wind is producing some of the cheapest electricity in the country. In California, there are utility-scale solar facilities that supply electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes. The potential for energy production from geothermal, biomass, radiant energy, tidal power, and other technologies is almost boundless. We are making progress, but much, much more needs to be done. After all, the future of the planet is at stake.
One of the more profound lessons that I’ve learned in politics is that everything is related to everything else. Nothing exists in a vacuum. There is no clearer example of that than our failure to boldly address the crisis of climate change and how that relates to a corrupt political and campaign finance system.
On one hand, the scientists tell us that bold action is needed to transform our energy system and prevent horrific damage to our planet. Further, poll after poll tells us that a significant majority of Americans believe we should be more aggressive in moving to improve energy efficiency and sustainable energy, not only to combat climate change, but also to improve our ability to provide clean air and clean water. One might think that in a rational and democratic society, when the people want something to happen and science tells them that they are right in wanting it, it would happen.
In today’s world, that’s not quite the way it works. In opposition to science and what the people want are enormously powerful forces who want to maintain the status quo. They are more interested in short-term profits for fossil fuel companies than in the future of the planet. They have a lot of power, they have a lot of money, and they know how to make a corrupt political and campaign finance system work for them.
In recent years the major energy companies have thrown unprecedented amounts of money at elected officials to buy their loyalty. Thanks to the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, the fossil fuel industry can pour unlimited amounts of money into the political system without having to disclose how much or to whom it was given.
Moreover, some in the fossil fuel industry have intentionally lied about the impact of climate change and have funded organizations that have waged major campaigns of obfuscation and distortion. For many years the corporate media, especially television, heavily funded by fossil fuel ads, have either downplayed the significance of climate change or ignored the issue.
Excellent investigative journalism has recently revealed that Exxon did pioneering research on the effects of climate change in the 1970s and ’80s, but Exxon executives kept the findings to themselves and later spread disinformation and confusion to protect its bottom line.
Charles and David Koch, extreme right-wing businessmen who have made most of their money in fossil fuels, have funded numerous “think tanks” to obfuscate the issue. According to Greenpeace, the Koch brothers have given over $100 million to climate-change-denial front groups that are working to delay policies and regulations aimed at stopping global warming.
All of this is eerily reminiscent of the fight over regulating tobacco, when representatives of the tobacco industry repeatedly testified before Congress that cigarettes don’t cause cancer, emphysema, and other illnesses. As a result of their lies, how many millions of people throughout the world unnecessarily died? Over the years, how many trillions of dollars have been spent to treat tobacco-caused illnesses?
Our goal should be to cut U.S. carbon pollution by at least 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050, compared with where we were in 1990. These are not unachievable, utopian goals. We can make it happen by dramatically increasing energy efficiency, aggressively moving away from fossil fuels, and deploying historic levels of new renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal. And we must help lead an international mobilization to make sure other countries make similar efforts. We can and must do this, for our children and our planet. Let me briefly address the steps we need to take to get there.
GEOTHERMAL: of or related to the internal heat of the earth
PROMOTING ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Energy efficiency is the low-hanging fruit in the battle against climate change. It is easy, it is relatively inexpensive, and every kilowatt we save through efficiency is one kilowatt that we do not have to produce. Pretty straightforward.
Forty percent of energy used in this country goes to heat, cool, and light buildings and run electricity through them. Making our homes, office buildings, schools, and factories more energy-efficient will reduce energy demand, save money on fuel bills, cut carbon emissions, and create good-paying jobs. We are talking about making sure every new building is built to the highest efficiency standards and that old buildings are retrofitted as much as possible to incorporate state-of-the-art insulation, efficient LED lighting, and modern heating and cooling systems.
Renewable energy is our future—and people in Vermont and across the country are already working to transform our energy system.
TWEET BY BERNIE SANDERS,
MARCH 19, 2017, 2:21 PM
It never ceases to amaze me that in my state of Vermont, where we still have some very cold winters, many people, particularly low-income families, live in poorly insulated homes. The reason is simple: they do not have the money to pay the up-front costs to weatherize their homes. This is an issue I have encountered over and over. The cost of an energy project—whether weatherizing a house, installing energy-efficient lighting, replacing an old heating system for a more efficient one, or installing solar panels—is often a barrier to implementing the project, even though these efficiency improvements can return as much as three or four dollars in savings for every dollar invested.
That is why innovative financing programs, like on-bill financing and property-assessed clean energy loans, are so important for homeowners and business owners alike. These programs allow a utility or a municipality to lend customers money to make efficiency improvements. The consumers then pay off the loan directly on their utility or property tax bill while their energy costs decline. If this is not a win-win situation, I’m not sure what is. The barrier to up-front costs is removed, and the consumer uses less energy.
We must also take a hard look at increasing efficiency in the transportation sector, which produces 26 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and half of all toxic emissions. New efficiency standards could reduce gasoline consumption by twelve billion barrels over ten years.
However, even then, the United States will lag behind the more aggressive efficiency standards in Japan, Canada, South Korea, and most European nations. Instead of the current goal of reaching 54.5 miles per gallon, we should, at the very least, set the goal at 65 mpg. If Europe can do it, so can we.
We must make hybrid cars and electric vehicles much more affordable. The potential reduction in carbon emissions from electric cars is enormous, especially as we transition to an electric grid powered increasingly by renewable energy. We should be funding cutting-edge electric car research—particularly advanced batteries—incentivizing the purchase of electric vehicles, and building the recharging infrastructure necessary for widespread adoption.
Lastly, increasing transportation efficiency means making major improvements to our intercity rail and public transit systems. Modern rail and transit systems would take significant numbers of trucks and cars off the roads, move people and cargo in a far more energy-efficient manner, and significantly reduce carbon emissions.
ENDING SUBSIDIES TO FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES
The great irony of climate change is that American taxpayers are subsidizing the most profitable industry in history, whose products are quite literally killing us, to the tune of more than $20.5 billion every single year. For decades, we have given the oil, gas, and coal companies tax breaks, direct subsidies, and fantastically lucrative leases and royalty agreements to extract oil, gas, and coal from our public lands and off our shores. It makes absolutely no sense, and it has to stop.
It is an example of completely upside-down priorities. For every dollar of taxpayer funds invested in renewable energy over the past fifteen years, fossil fuels have received eighty dollars! That is utterly absurd, especially when you consider that five of the largest oil companies—ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips—had combined profits of $93 billion in 2013, yet average an annual $2.4 billion in tax breaks.
The first step to weaning ourselves off fossil fuels is to end those huge subsidies, which energy companies have spent billions in lobbying costs and campaign contributions to preserve. That taxpayer money could be directed instead toward transitioning to a clean energy economy.
TAXING CARBON AND METHANE POLLUTION
Another important step in dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to start charging fossil fuel companies for the pollution they create. Quite simply, these companies make money hand over fist while taxpayers bear the costs of the harm to the environment and public health. We must flip that equation on its head and make energy companies pay for the true costs of burning fossil fuels by putting a price on carbon and methane. Not only is this fair, it would also be a game changer in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2017, I introduced “100 by 50,” legislation that sets targets for renewable energy production: 50 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050. Technology has made the production of renewable energy affordable. We must stop climate erosion. This bill commits our country to doing so.
BANNING FRACKING
In the short term, we should put an end to the most environmentally horrendous methods of extracting fossil fuels, and to my mind, that begins with banning fracking. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves injecting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals into the ground to release otherwise inaccessible oil and natural gas deposits trapped deep in underground rock formations. While innovative from an engineering perspective, fracking is highly problematic for several reasons.
As was documented in Josh Fox’s excellent film Gasland, the chemicals injected into the ground pose serious health and environmental risks to drinking water, air quality, and wildlife. However, the full extent of the risk is not known because the gas industry isn’t required to disclose what chemicals are used or their quantities. If that complete lack of transparency sounds outrageous, it’s because it is.
Moreover, the process of fracking leaks considerable amounts of methane into the atmosphere and groundwater—some studies suggest as much as 40 to 60 percent more than conventional natural gas drilling methods. And let us not forget, methane is eighty-four times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of trapping heat.
Fracking is one of the main reasons I reject the notion that natural gas is a “bridge fuel” that can help us transition from oil and coal to clean sustainable energy. While it is true that natural gas burns cleaner than oil or coal, it still releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide when combusted. To my mind, being the best of three bad fossil fuel options does not make it a good option. Fracking simply increases the supply of and reliance on a fossil fuel that is contributing to global warming, while also doing irreparable damage to the areas where it is extracted. It’s time to put an end to fracking.
LET’S JUST LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND
There are other extraction practices that should not be allowed, and there are environmentally sensitive areas that should be off-limits to exploration. Thankfully, the Obama administration banned oil extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which spans 19.6 million acres in Alaska and boasts the most biodiversity of any protected area north of the Arctic Circle.
We should also end all new federal leases for oil, gas, or coal extraction on public lands and waters. Public lands and waters are for the public to enjoy for generations to come—not for the oil companies to exploit for profit in the short term. This includes prohibiting offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic, entering into no new leases, and ending nonproducing leases for offshore drilling in the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico. If there is a lesson to be learned from the disastrous 2010 BP oil spill, it is that there is no such thing as safe offshore oil drilling.
We must also ban the practice of mountaintop removal in the Appalachian Mountains, where coal companies are blowing up entire mountaintops to get at the thin seams of coal below. The communities in the region are paying a huge price for this destructive practice in the quality of their health, culture, and environment. Let’s invest in Appalachian communities to help them transition to a clean, prosperous, and healthy future.
NO MORE KEYSTONES
President Obama was right to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, but we must not let the present administration resurrect the project, or to ever allow anything else like it. The goal is to turn away from fossil fuels, and it would be very wrong to let a Canadian oil company pipe some of the dirtiest oil on the planet across the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. It astounds me that anyone could think that a pipeline transporting highly toxic tar sands oil near our rivers and fragile aquifers, particularly when it would then be exported to other countries, is somehow in the national interest.
INVESTING IN RENEWABLE ENERGY
Up to now, I have outlined various steps we need to take to move away from fossil fuels and dramatically lower the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. We must concurrently make a massive and long-term investment in sustainable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal to make a seamless transition from dirty fossil fuels to a clean energy future.
One of the best ways to promote the development of renewable energy is to expand federal investment and tax incentives for building new energy-generation projects. The solar investment tax credit is an up-front credit equal to 30 percent of the cost of building a commercial or residential solar project, and the production tax credit is a 1.8-cent credit for every kilowatt-hour of energy generated by wind projects in their first ten years.
The solar credit is a huge reason why over the last decade, solar power has experienced an annual growth rate of nearly 60 percent and the cost of solar panels has been driven down by more than 60 percent between 2009 and 2016, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Similarly, the production credit has made possible the development of wind farms that provided 31 percent of all new domestic power capacity in the last ten years. With proper federal support, it could generate 20 percent or more of our nation’s electricity by 2030.
However, the uncertainty over the long-term prospects of these tax credits has stunted investment in clean energy projects, which often take five or more years to plan. Efforts to make the tax incentives permanent are met on Capitol Hill by that familiar refrain: we simply don’t have the money. The hypocrisy of those who argue that solar and wind tax credits are too expensive or are no longer needed because the industries should be able to stand on their own is stunning. Taxpayers have been subsidizing fossil fuel companies through tax credits for more than one hundred years, and Congress long ago made those incentives permanent features of the federal tax code. And those who argue that renewable energy has hidden costs conveniently turn a blind eye to the fact that fossil fuels are cooking our planet—talk about hidden costs! It is time to end the hypocrisy and make the credits permanent.
CLIMATE JUSTICE
It is important to acknowledge that while the effects of climate change will touch us all, they will not be felt equally. As is so often the case, disenfranchised minority and poor communities will undoubtedly be hardest hit. Just take a look at the disproportionate impact of Hurricane Katrina on poor and African American neighborhoods in New Orleans. Do you really think a wealthier neighborhood would have had such substandard levees? Not likely. Which is why, as we develop plans to address climate resiliency, we must recognize the heightened public health risks faced by low-income and minority communities.
Of course, this is not a problem unique to the United States. In November 2015, the World Bank issued a report highlighting how the effects of global warming are already being disproportionately borne by poor communities around the world. That trend will only worsen because those communities are the least prepared to deal with such “climate shocks” as rising seas, extreme weather, and severe droughts. The report estimated that as many as 100 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty by 2030 because of disrupted agriculture and the spread of malaria and other diseases. This is why funding resiliency efforts in poor communities and mitigating the disproportionate effects of climate change on the most vulnerable must be a part of all international climate negotiations.
LEADING AT HOME AND ABROAD
Climate change is truly a global problem. The decisions individual countries, especially the advanced industrialized countries, make about their energy systems affect everyone else on this planet. The carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in the United States, China, or Spain has no nationality and respects no borders, nor does the heat wave, hurricane, or drought caused by global warming. Moreover, even if the United States were to successfully transform its energy system to 100 percent renewables, it would not likely be enough to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The fact of the matter is, we are all in the same boat together, and solving this unprecedented global challenge will require an unprecedented level of international cooperation. As the most powerful country in the history of the planet, the United States must lead that effort.
The December 2015 Paris Climate Conference was an important step in that direction in that, for the first time, 195 countries adopted a universal, legally binding global climate deal. But we all know that the fossil fuel industry has enormous power, and enormous influence over governmental decisions throughout the world. The United States can and should lead by example. Our country has contributed greatly to climate change, but we also have the largest stage and the greatest know-how to lead in implementing climate change solutions. Part of our challenge should be to show that the transition to a clean energy future can work, that we can produce affordable clean energy and strengthen our economy. Right now, the template developing countries have for industrialization is based on burning fossil fuels. With the largest economy in the world, we are uniquely positioned to demonstrate that there is a viable alternative.
Our message is simple. We will fight to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to sustainable energy.
TWEET BY BERNIE SANDERS,
APRIL 29, 2017, 9:36 AM
Unless we take bold action to reverse climate change, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are going to look back on this period in history and ask a very simple question: Where were they? Why didn’t the United States of America, the most powerful nation on earth, lead the international community in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and preventing the devastating damage that the scientific community was sure would come?
MOBILIZE
Sign up for action alerts and support Earthjustice (earthjustice.org). Its tagline, “Because the earth needs a good lawyer,” describes its work to hold accountable those who break environmental laws. The site provides information on initiatives such as the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Friends of the Earth (foe.org) is a network of seventy-five grassroots environmental groups around the world that take action on such issues as climate, food production, forest and wildland protection, and economic justice.
NextGen Climate (nextgenclimate.org) acts politically to prevent climate disaster. The site helps you contact Congress, offers petitions to sign, and provides links to news stories.
350.org is an international organization committed to decreasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You can filter actions by region or topic on their website, 350.org.
Greenpeace works to expose and find solutions for environmental problems around the world. Its website, greenpeace.org, lists hundreds of opportunities to volunteer and take action locally.
LEARN MORE
NASA publishes up-to-date vital signs of the planet, with full reports on carbon emissions, temperature, and ice and sea levels. Facts, articles, solutions, and resources are available at the excellent climate.nasa.gov.
The sad story of Shishmaref, Alaska, is told here: pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/detect/human-shishmaref.shtml. The page includes links to sites maintained by indigenous peoples and to scientific studies on the disappearance of sea ice.
The 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth profiles former Vice President Al Gore’s efforts to educate the public about the dangers of climate change.
There are more than seventy-five TED talks about climate change, including lectures by scientist James Hansen, Al Gore, and Mary Robinson, the former United Nations high commissioner for human rights, here: ted.com/topics/climate+change.
