While Americans debate whether President Donald Trump should pay a legal price for paying off a porn star, battle over drag queens reading stories to kids and fight about whether Latinos should be called Latinx, another dire warning about climate change has been issued by a United Nations panel of scientists — a warning that almost certainly will be ignored by most people and most of the political leaders who might be able to do something about it.
The latest scientific assessment indicates that the planet is dangerously close to hitting a warming increase of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over pre-industrial times. That may not sound like much, but, in fact, it is a level that will begin to bring catastrophic change. The scientists said that, to stay under that warming threshold, which was agreed upon in the Paris climate agreement as a limit not to be exceeded, the nations of the world must cut 60% of their greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.
For anyone who thinks human beings will summon the political will to achieve that goal in just 12 years, I applaud your optimism and also assume you believe in unicorns and the Easter Bunny.
“Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a speech on Monday after the findings were revealed. “Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”
Guterres called for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and for rich countries to quit coal, oil and gas by 2040. He, too, apparently believes in unicorns.
I do think humanity will eventually get around to taking action, but not until island nations and big chunks of Florida have sunk into the sea, millions of people have become desperate migrants fleeing uninhabitable regions of the planet, monster storms have become commonplace, glaciers and ice sheets have completely melted and hundreds of species have gone extinct. The question then will be whether any kind of action will be enough to forestall the extinction of the one species we all care about: homo sapiens.
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