Sunday, November 13, 2016

Climate Change is Not a Republican, Democrat, Green, or Libertarian Issue; It's a Human Issue

Hats off to the wise 66.5 percent of Oregon people for passing Measure 99,  an “Outdoor School Education Fund” supported by Oregon Lottery.  As a 6th grader, I went to Camp Cayonview. Outdoor School is where seeds are planted in young minds to honor "Spaceship Earth" and the community of species of plants and animals traveling with us, which brings me to my title of this post.  In the fewest words, 195 countries at COP21 voted global warming was/is a huge problem with "no objection in the room." Republicans, Democrats, Greens, and Libertarians must work together on this or there won't be Republicans, Democrats, Greens, or Libertarians.

Some 106 countries endorsed a 1.5 C limit increase above pre-industrial levels, but "The INDCs [Intended Nationally Determined Contributions] in the Paris Agreement, assuming no further progress with the pledges, would put the world on track for a global temperature increase of 3.5°C (6.3°F) above pre-industrial levels."  Clive Hamilton of The Guardian reported "We’re heading for a world warmed by 3-4C of warming or more, giving us an Earth hotter than it has been for several million years and way beyond human experience [ . . . . ,] calamitous by any definition of the word. [ . . . . ]  The tipping points include the melting of Arctic summer sea ice (which is really gone already), melting of Tibetan glaciers and the Greenland ice-sheet (eventually bringing about six metres of sea-level rise), and destruction of the vast and vitally important Amazon rainforest through dieback and fires. [par] All of this would be accompanied by a catalogue of catastrophes – extreme weather events, sea-level rise and so on – the harms of which would be magnified many-fold by geopolitical conflict and mass migrations. [par] It is a fact rarely understood, especially by our political leaders, that we are speaking of irreversible change because CO2 persists in the atmosphere for many centuries, and because the entire Earth System is transformed by climate change."

John D. Banusiewicz, writing for DoD News at The U. S. Department of Defense, cited former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's position on global warming: "food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe."