Wednesday
September 18, 2024 
I have always been keenly aware of, and interested in, how politics and national policies can impact peoples’ lives significantly. But I have been nearly oblivious to just how much climate change significantly affects us and will affect us, until the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came out with its 6th formal report last year and now recently on March 20 of this year. The latest IPCC report featured scientists running out of ways to emphasize how urgently deep cuts in fossil fuel use are needed.
We are seeing the effects of global warming in our country and across the world right now. On March 31, there were at least 83 reported tornadoes in a massive thunderstorm system that devastated numerous communities in Arkansas, Tennessee, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. This resulted in 26 deaths and 126 injuries, as well as 770,000 power outages. In one day. On that very evening, as part of the same general storm system, a tornado ripped a four-mile path from Wrightstown to Newtown Township right in Bucks County.
Because of the multiyear drought in the West, the water levels in Lake Mead on the Colorado River sank to dangerously low levels thus threatening the water supply for millions of customers in California, Arizona and Nevada. Climate models predict that droughts in the Southwest will become more intense.
Warming temperatures have made the wildfire season longer and more severe in the West, and the deepening drought in the region has added to the risk of fires. Scientists estimate that human-caused climate change has already doubled the area of forest burned in recent decades.
The Antarctic Peninsula has been warming rapidly, five times faster than the global average. Since 1950, the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed almost 3°C (5.4°F). Overall warmer temperatures along the peninsula are increasing ice melt and have caused several ice shelves to break apart. Between 1992 and 2017, Antarctica lost more than 3 trillion tons of ice.
And as a result of the melting of the ice in the Arctic and Antarctica, sea-level rise is occurring — right now. This will have devastating effects on coastal communities across the world, including the destruction of buildings of every coastal city — forcing the migration to higher ground of those people who live there. We’re talking about cities like Boston, New York City, Miami, Charleston and Los Angeles. Globally sea level has risen about eight inches since 1880. By 2100, models show that sea level will rise at least another foot and as much as eight feet if societies continue their carbon emissions at the current rate.
Most of the IPCC scientific authority comes from the thousands of highly credentialed volunteer scientists from around the world who participate as authors or reviewers. The scientists concluded unequivocally through an analysis of troves of data that humans have been the main cause of the global warming primarily through our generating large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). Concentrations of the gas are at their highest in at least two million years.
The IPCC estimates that since 1850 the average global temperature has increased 1.1°C, or 2.0°F. To avoid the worst calamitous impacts from global warming, the scientists say we need to keep the global rise from exceeding 1.5°C. But this will take some doing.
The most alarming part of the latest IPCC reports is the sheer speed at which the world needs to overhaul foundational elements of modern life — our energy, transportation, land use, and food systems. The biggest challenge is whether there is the political will to change, particularly in the United States, which is the second-biggest carbon polluter after China.
It means at the very least that by 2050 the world must end its use of fossil fuels, which implies huge changes in the way societies live.
In this country, new laws that address global warming, like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, have made billions of dollars in incentives available for individuals, families, businesses, and communities to embrace clean energy and other practical climate solutions in our homes, workplaces and more. It’s critical that all of us work together to leverage these laws for real climate action. But these legislative actions still fall way short of how much we should be dedicating of the federal budget to avoid many, many more and larger catastrophic effects of global warming.
So we citizens of the United States and citizens of planet Earth should not rest until Congress and the president agree to invest the hundreds of billions of dollars or so needed to do our part to save the planet. The Congress and the president must invest far more in research on efficient ways to generate green energy, and in setting an across-the-board carbon tax on all primary generators of fossil-fuel energy.
How can we just sit around when the signs are all around us? Let’s wake up! But before we smell the coffee, let’s call our congressional representative and our senators every day, until they realize we’re serious and they start to take us seriously by their actions. Let’s emulate the Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, who beginning at age 15 has constantly challenged world leaders to take immediate action on global warming.
Andrew Mills lives in Lower Gwynedd.
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