This reader’s opinion by Ken Ward was published in The Hill, November 17, 2017.
It’s fashionable to cast the civic conversation around climate change, such as it is, as a polarized debate between “climate deniers” and “climate believers.” That tidy distinction is on display at the Bonn climate talks, where the Trump administration will promote coal, natural gas and nuclear energy as an answer to climate change from the official U.S. office, while a “shadow delegation” of U.S. municipal and state leaders, housed in tents, declare their continuing commitment to the Paris climate agreement.
It’s a neat, black-and-white story, peopled with stock characters, useful to both sides, and fundamentally untrue.
Two reports, The Fourth National Climate Assessment (U.S.), and the World Meteorological Organization’s (UN WMO) annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, underline, yet again, that none of the proposals, plans or actions of governments or the private sector will result in any meaningful steps to avoid cataclysmic climate change. Concentrations of carbon dioxide surged at a record-breaking speed last year, according to the WMO, and even if all targets in the Paris Agreement were magically met, those emissions reductions are insufficient to avoid collapse of conditions that make civilization possible. MORE…