Dear Donald,
I am pretty sure you will never read the National Climate Assessment Report that outlined the economic consequences of climate change. Over the next decades climate change is going to cost the United States and the American people hundreds of billions of dollars and cause a 10% decline in the economy. To summarize the report in the simplest terms – Climate change bad. Economic disaster is coming.
I know you are not going to read The Lancet Countdown either. It tracks the impact of climate change on global health. To summarize that report – Climate change will make us sicker.
The Lancet publishes a number of scientific and medical journals, which in Trump World makes it suspicious. Its manifesto is that “medicine must serve society, that knowledge must transform society, that the best science must lead to better lives,” which also makes it suspicious. But I think you should put your suspicions about science aside to listen to what they have to say. The Lancet Countdown report involves collaboration by more than two dozen 27 academic institutions, the United Nations, and intergovernmental agencies from every continent. They include representatives from the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Universities of Colorado, Washington, and North Texas.
I thought you might find a few bullet points based on The Lancet Countdown helpful. Maybe Ivanka, Jared, or your Fox friends could read them to you.
- People over sixty-five years old are especially vulnerable to heat exposure. More than 40% of the older people in Europe, 38% in Africa, and 34% in Asia are already at risk of higher rates of “heat stress, cardiovascular disease, and renal disease.
- People living in urban areas face increased risk of “cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases.”
- Climate change aggravates mental health problems because of the “frequency, duration, intensity, and unpredictability of weather-related hazards change.” Psychological trauma will lead to higher suicide rates.
- Heat waves threaten food supplies from land and sea sources. There will be food shortages, homelessness, and displacement, which mean more undocumented immigrants coming to the United States and higher costs for keeping the military at the Mexican border. Thirty countries are already experiencing downward trends in crop yields.
- South America and Southeast Asia are increasingly exposed to floods and droughts. Climate change is expected to result in an additional 1.4 billion drought-exposure events per year and 2 billion flood-exposure events per year by the end of the century.
- Large areas of South America, northern and southern Africa, and Southeast Asia may experience 12 months of drought throughout the year. Prolonged drought leads to reduced crop yields, food insecurity, malnutrition, and premature mortality.
- Floods contribute to the spread of water-borne disease, reduced availability of potable water, and forced migration. 15% of all deaths related to natural disasters are due to floods.
- Rates for “two particularly climate-sensitive diseases, dengue fever and malignant skin melanoma” are rising in regions most susceptible to both diseases. “Mortality rates for malignant melanoma, which notably has a decadal delay from exposure to death and is associated with exposure to ultraviolet radiation, have increased markedly in Europe, the Americas, and the Western Pacific.” The range for certain types of mosquitoes is increasing and with it the range for dengue fever, malaria, cholera, and Zika, including the potential spread of Zika in the United States.
- Rising temperatures make sustained work increasingly difficult or impossible. In 2017, 153 billion hours of labor (3.4 billion weeks of work) were lost because of heat waves and heat wave related illness. This is an increase of 62 billion hours when compared to 2000. The regions of the world most affected by these changes are India, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and South America.
- Heat waves are also costly because they damage “public infrastructure, power and connectivity, agricultural land, and sacred places.”
In 2018, many of the global trends previously identified accelerated. “The indicators and data presented in the Lancet Countdown's 2018 report provide great cause for concern, with the pace of climate change outweighing the urgency of the response.
And Donald, if this is not enough, rising sea levels threaten to flood Trump properties on the Atlantic coast of Florida by 2045. These include Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach, Trump Hollywood Condos, Trump Grande Sunny Isles, Trump Tower Sunny Isles, Trump National Doral, Trump National Golf Club Jupiter, and the Mar-a-Lago “Winter White House” in Palm Beach.
Donald, you can follow Alan Singer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReecesPieces8