The White House announced a new set of data for it’s climate information series and has furthered its plans to combat health issues from climate change. The report released indicates current issues with climate related health issues, many based on air quality, but also increasing disease vectors in new areas, frequently mosquito borne diseases. The information is scary and vital, but it is more aimed at mitigation instead of stopping climate change. The advantage of concentrating on and widely disseminating health care threats, is it may move public opinion more easily and faster, resulting in more concrete efforts to convert from fossil fuels.
www.whitehouse.gov/...
Thinkprogress has an article that summarizes some of the health risks, including thousands of climate related deaths per year over the next few decades, and over 100,000 additional child asthma attacks. thinkprogress.org/…
The Weather Channel has a short video addressing both the short and long term effects, including many days per year by the end of this century in which children and pets outdoors would be at significant risk of heat related illness and many outdoor jobs would be impossible to perform during the hottest parts of a year here in the US on a regular basis. Think about the implication of that, your house catches fire in the summer and the fireman may respond to pull you out of your house, but they will not put out the fire because they will die of heat stroke (heat stroke is already an extreme hazard in this profession, many fireman are hospitalized for training incidents of heat stroke let alone being in full gear at a fire.) Farmers, construction workers, road work, will all have to change. A car breakdown on the side of the road isn’t life threatening just in Death Valley but somewhere in Alabama. So much dislocation to daily living. Leading to another conclusion of the reports, stress related illnesses will increase.
Outside of this report, China announced a $50 trillion grid program to partner with other nations and entities to have the world converted to electricity on renewables and off of fossil fuels by 2050. It’s program is one half of the scientific/engineering estimates of what it would take to create a world wide grid. Do we really want the Chinese controlling half the world’s electrical grid, shouldn’t we and the EU be partnering with them? That leaves aside the question of whether we should have centralized grids or be focusing more on independence or localized grids. My point is more, why can’t Americans think big and tackle big problems any more? Is it really more important that black people stay poor and gay people don’t get married so Republicans can stay in power or that the Democrats elect people who aren’t going to do big things because we dare not propose spending money because we are afraid of Republicans?
The world is going to be not only devastated by lack of potable water, food shortages, mass migrations, wars but just because living life itself will be unimaginably harder.
We don’t have time to slowly make changes for another 25 or 30 years. It really is now and only now that we have an opportunity to save a world that will still be largely tolerable in most places. If we wait until 2025 or so to get serious, it will be too late. All the talk of costs, of dislocation to the economy and changes in lifestyle, they don’t matter. The costs, the dislocation and the changes are inevitable. The issue is will we start playing catch up while there are some things we can save, including ourselves, or will we wait to make the planet’s children of tomorrow hate us all for what we did to them.