Both the U.N.’s intergovernmental panel on climate change and the U.S.’s climate science special report predict dire consequences over the next decade from heating of the planet due to fossil fuel-driven carbon dioxide accumulation. Each of these consensus reports lists likely devastation from this warming with increasing droughts, floods, ocean level rises, reduced snow pack, crop failures, mass migrations and increasing uncontrollable range and forest fires. These damaging changes are predicted with global average temperature increases of as little as 1.5 degrees Celsius.
You might want to believe that this temperature rise won’t matter much, or is a still long way off. Australia is now about 1.5 degrees Celsius above its baseline average temperature, and this week is on fire. The fires have consumed 25 million acres, destroyed 2,000 homes, displaced a quarter of a million residents, killed 27 people, and killed more than a billion birds, reptiles and mammals.
The threat to us all from climate change is much greater than from a war with Iran. Recently, our four congressmen abdicated their power to limit Trump’s ability to start wars. The same day, Trump announced a new war on our environmental protection rules. Where are our brave congressmen today?
William Cosgrove
Cottonwood Heights