We have known about global climate change for a while now, and we know what is causing it -- the misuse and overuse of fossil fuels. But so far, our politicians (especially Republicans) have failed to take adequate action to stop it. We are running out of time. We may be less than a decade away from reaching the tipping point -- the point where any action taken will not stop the catastrophic effects of it.
The following is from CBS News:
The wild winter weather this week has been called historic and unprecedented, and John Kerry, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, wants to stop it from becoming typical.
"Obviously we want to prevent this from becoming the new normal to the degree that we can," Kerry told CBS News' Ben Tracy.
Many people wrongly believe that climate change only relates to temperatures increasing, not decreasing.
Kerry said it threatens all weather patterns.
"I think it's a very appropriate way to think of it, so it is directly related to the warming, even though your instinct is to say, wait a minute, this is the new Ice Age. But it's not," Kerry said. "It is coming from the global warming and it threatens all the normal weather patterns."
The planet is warming in large part because of greenhouse gas emissions that are pumped into the sky from power plants, cars, planes and industry. It even comes from the way we raise and grow our food. America is the second-largest emitter behind China of greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.
That warming is believed to make storms stronger, droughts drier and oceans higher. That means certain places on Earth where people currently live will become unlivable. In fact, it is already happening.
Kerry said we have only a few years left to avoid a climate catastrophe.
"Well, the scientists told us three years ago we had 12 years to avert the worst consequences of climate crisis. We are now three years gone, so we have nine years left," he said.
That's where the Paris accord, a climate treaty dedicated to lowering greenhouse gas emissions in more than 180 countries around the world, comes in. It was named after the City of Light, where it was agreed to back in 2015. But the pledges made then by nearly every country on Earth to cut their planet-warming emissions will no longer cut it.
"Even if we did everything that we said we were going to do when we signed up in Paris we would see a rise in the Earth's temperature to somewhere around 3.7 degrees or more, which is catastrophic," Kerry said.
