Do you stand under the tallest tree in a forest during a lightening storm? Do you cross an interstate highway blindfolded? Do you pour gasoline on the floor of your house as a wildfire approaches? Would you leave your children locked in a parked car on a hot summer day (or ever)? Would you play Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun?
Such pointless acts of self-destruction pale in comparison with unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, as announced Nov. 4 by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the direction of President Trump (He of the “great and matchless wisdom.”)
Far from an act of “wisdom,” withdrawal from the Paris agreement is not merely political or ideological: it is suicidal. This decision effectively cripples the tentative beginning of an international response to the most terrifying threat facing humanity other than nuclear war, which climate change may eventually provoke.
In its bipartisan column in the Washington Post (Nov. 4), former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel jointly condemn the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement, already signed by virtually every country on Earth, as “A dark time for America … This is not America First; once again it is America isolated.”
They continue: “Climate change is already affecting every sector and region of the United States, as hundreds of top scientists from 13 federal agencies made clear in a report the White House itself released last year.”
Needless to say, it is even darker for the world at large. The planet is now experiencing more frequent, more intense and more costly disasters associated with human-caused climate change in the forms of prolonged drought, wildfires, intensified hurricanes, coastal and river flooding and extreme temperatures. At the global scale, the last four years have been the hottest on record.
As oceans absorb heat from the warming atmosphere, marine ecosystems that sustain vital fisheries are degraded and melting of polar ice accelerates sea level rise. Drought and sea level rise in turn jointly will eradicate vast areas of arable and habitable land, leading to mass migrations of climate refugees and potential armed (and possibly nuclear) conflicts over scarce resources.
A new report discussed in the New York Times (Oct. 30) estimates that “Rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought, threatening to erase some of the world’s great cities.” The report states that some 150 million people today live in locations that will be at least occasionally underwater by mid-century, including much of the present land areas of Mumbai, Jakarta, Bangkok, Shanghai and southern Vietnam.
More than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries have just published a statement in BioScience that warns: “The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity.”
Their warning is supported by a broad spectrum of indicators that include rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, global temperatures, deforestation and ice loss among alpine glaciers and polar ice packs.
Worse yet, climate change is reinforcing itself through vicious feedback cycles. Wildfires in drought-stricken regions worldwide spew carbon and particulates into the atmosphere, thus amplifying the “greenhouse effect” that aggravates global warming. Atmospheric warming in northern latitudes is melting permafrost in Alaska, Canada and Siberia, damaging infrastructure and releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
The 2015 Paris climate agreement of is course not a panacea. Its central goal to limit global warming to 2° Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100 is considered by climate experts as both too high and too late to avoid catastrophic impacts. Indeed, the planet is approaching the dangerous level of 1.5º C, with catastrophic impacts already widespread, including drought, flooding, wildfires, and sea level rise. Ask the residents of Sonoma County, California or Venice, Italy, or New Delhi whether climate change is real.
But the Paris agreement is at least a starting point for international response, to be refined and strengthened as awareness of the crisis deepens.
In 2018, the International Panel on Climate Change called for a more stringent goal of reducing carbon emissions by half by 2030, and “net zero” by mid-century to try to remain at or below the 1.5º C. level. (Ominously, global carbon emissions rose 2.7 percent in 2018 and 2.7 percent in the United States.)
It is deeply ironic that the Paris agreement should be undermined by Republicans, the same party that proudly assumed the mantle of defender of the environment during the 1970s and 80s. Reacting to the warnings of scientists and public outcry, President Richard M. Nixon in the seminal year of 1970 signed the National Environment Policy Act, the Clean Air Act Amendments and the Resources Recovery Act. He also established the Environmental Protection Agency by executive order.
In 1972, he approved a vast expansion of the federal Clean Water Act, followed by the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act in 1973. This Republican-led blitz of federal environmental laws and their state counterparts substantially improved the nation’s air and water quality, benefiting both the nation’s economy and public health.
Today, the betrayal of that Republican legacy of environmental protection by the Trump administration and its supporters is a tragic capitulation to campaign contributors, especially the fossil fuel industry.
But the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement is beyond tragic: It is a crime against humanity.
The writer is an emeritus professor of geography, UMass Amherst, and a resident of Florence.