The Cost of Climate Change     

     Is climate change real?

     If so, are human activities contributing?

     Well, we know this much is true:

     A hundred thousand daily global flights stitch contrails across our fragile atmosphere now, burning so much jet fuel it runs through pipelines to major airports. A million flights every ten days. 

     Two million plus coal-fired power plants belch their waste gasses, double the number that existed in 2000.

     One point two billion gasoline and diesel vehicles add their exhausts to the noxious mix. Electric vehicles are only making an insignificant dent, and even they depend on coal-fired plants for recharging.

     Fifty thousand huge ships ply the global seas daily with their copious diesel exhausts.

     There are thirty-five hundred oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico alone, each constantly flaring off unrefined natural gas. Thousands of other wells and refineries worldwide add their pollutants.

     Seven point eight billion people inhale oxygen and exhale CO2 constantly while ongoing slash-and-burn agriculture eats deeply into our planet’s lungs.

     This is not conjecture. These are not conspiracy theories. Not political rhetoric. They are unarguable facts, unprecedented to such an extent in all human history.

     More and more scientists agree that it’s madness to pretend all this is not affecting our climate, not inexorably warming it. And there are blatant evidences of creeping overall climate change for all of us to see. Cities like Beijing and New Delhi and Los Angeles are choking on their own smog, creating a litany of sad and expensive health problems. Seas are choking on plastics, polluting as they slowly degrade. Summers everywhere are scorching. There are more frequent and more severe storms. Raging wildfires proliferate. Areas of severe drought are spreading. Crops are failing. Glaciers and icecaps are melting. Sea levels are slowly rising.

     Look at any recent year. The thousands who’ve lost their homes and businesses to vast wildfires in California and Australia and elsewhere, or whose homes and businesses recent severe hurricanes and typhoons have stripped away, as in ravaged Florida, will not be paying taxes anytime soon, while governmental relief and mitigation of these events has been costing the diminishing tax base ever more billions of dollars.

     Logically, obviously, we have only two choices:

     We can bear the cost of adequate climate action now, up front and very soon, creating environmental jobs in the process and improving overall human health and safety worldwide.

     Or we can pay heavily for our inaction later.

Phil

www.philbowie.com