28 for '23

Just in case you weren't hiding under a rock or watching Fox News lately, COP 28, the latest summit dealing with climate change, recently concluded in Dubai, and the participants at that summit announced that there is a goal to wean us silly humans off fossil fuels for good.

A goal, not a plan.

But the statement does take into account the growing popularity of clean-energy technology, such as wind turbines (like the ones above) and the realization that, while petroleum may continuously form in the earth from dead matter and all that, we're using it faster than the innards of the earth can generate it.  The United Arab Emirates more or less admitted as much by hosting the latest COP summit in Dubai, one of the seven oil-rich sheikdoms that make up the U.A.E.

Unfortunately, the seriousness of another federation among the world's nations remains in doubt.  The United States is full of climate-change deniers who still refuse to believe that climate change is a thing despite three major rainstorms in as many weeks in the Northeast this December, each of which has been the equivalent of three or four feet of snow (which we were never in danger of getting, since it's been pretty mild for December of late).  And that's just one example of the extreme weather we've been having on this third rock from the sun.  These deniers - science skeptics who yet believe the literal meaning of the Bible hook, line and sinker - are ready to work 25/8 to return to the Presidency a man who wants to ban electric cars, thinks turbines cause cancer, wants to be a dictator for just his first day back in office to force more oil drilling (when an executive order would suffice), and is ready to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement a second time. 

One science writer says that even if all that happens, the world shouldn't worry.  Other countries are so well invested in reversing climate change and are so well prepared to take it on that if Trump does become President again, the only people who will suffer greatly are Americans.

Given our gun violence, our lack of guaranteed health care, and our overprocessed food, haven't we Americans already suffered in our own private hell long enough?

Clearing the Air

The two biggest polluters on this planet we call ours, the United States and China, formally agreed to adopt the Paris Agreement negotiated in late 2015 to keep the increase in the average global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.  The United States has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 28 percent below levels of emissions produced in 2005. The deal also hopes to provide $100 billion a year between 2016 and 2020 in financing to help developing countries meet their gas reduction goals.  As soon as the deal takes effect, nations that have ratified it have to wait for at least three years to leave it.

Unfortunately, climate-change denier Donald Trump is gaining in the presidential election polls and a presidential term is four years.  

Despite Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, despite the drought in California and some of the worst flooding in Louisiana in decades, despite the receding beaches in Miami, congressional Republicans still don't believe climate change is real and Trump is happy to please them by promising to commit the country to producing more coal.  President Obama knows this and has framed the deal as an executive agreement rather than as a treaty because he knew the Senate would never ratify it as a treaty.  But if the deal goes into effect before the year is out, that means a President Trump would be able to take the U.S. out of the deal by the end of 2019.  If you thought the United States was the skunk of the world under Ronald Reagan of George Walker Bush, wait'll the Donald takes over; you ain't seen nothing yet!

The one thing that gives me hope is that efforts to combat climate change are going full tilt boogie all over the world, including this country, as more energy producers are turning away from coal and more toward cleaner fuels like natural gas, as well as wind power.  Even if Trump gets into the White House, there's no stopping the tide of history.  And when the tide of the ocean floods his own properties, maybe then the Donald will come around.

On the other hand, maybe he'll eat the loss and build condos in a melted Greenland. :-O :-(