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There has never been a summer like this in recorded history: shocking ocean heat, deadly land heat, unprecedented fires and smoke, sea ice melting faster than we’ve ever seen or thought possible.
I’ve dreaded this depth of Earth breakdown for almost two decades, and, like many of my colleagues, I’ve been trying to warn you as hard as I could. Now it’s here.
And mark my words: it’s all still just getting started. So long as we burn fossil fuels, far, far worse is on the way; and I take zero satisfaction in knowing that this will be proven right, too, with a certainty as non-negotiable and merciless as the physics behind fossil-fueled global heating. Instead, I only feel fury at those in power, and bottomless grief for all that I love.
We are losing Earth on our watch. The Amazon rainforest may already be past its tipping point. Coral reefs as we know them will be gone from our planet by mid-century, and possibly much earlier given this surge in sea-surface temperatures. These are cosmic losses. And as a father, I grieve for my children.
Fossil fuels are causing this damage. Therefore, the only way out of this heat nightmare is to end them. No amount of tree planting, recycling, carbon offsetting, or wishful carbon-capture thinking will ever change this.
The longer we allow the fossil fuel industry to exist, the more irreversible damage to Earth the people who profit from it will continue to knowingly cause. We are careening toward fossil-fueled heat waves that will kill over a million people in single events. And it will not plateau there: more fossil fuels, more heat, more death. The only way out is to end fossil fuels.
President Biden’s refusal to declare a climate emergency and his eagerness to push new pipelines and new drilling – at an even faster pace than Trump – goes against science, goes against common sense, goes against life on Earth.
In the world of politics-as-usual, with its short-term goals and calculus of “safer to follow than to lead”, I suppose there are reasons and rationalizations for this planet-destroying choice. But speaking as a scientist, it seems ignorant and short-sighted. It’s certainly a form of climate denial. And I have no doubt that fossil fuel executives and lobbyists – and those who chose to stand with them – will, in the future, be considered criminals.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/27/joe-biden-climate-emergency-peter-kalmus
#USA #Politics #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #ClimateAction #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
