Dear Congressperson,
Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, warned on Monday that “unless we collectively change course, there is a high risk of failure” at the much-anticipated U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, scheduled in early November.
On September 30th, about 35 of the most powerful countries will meet in Milan, Italy, where they will largely decide what happens at the meeting in Glasgow. Weaker countries will be expected to accept those decisions without protest.
Speaking to reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York City after a closed-door meeting of national leaders to discuss climate policy, Antonio Guterres said “Based on the present commitments of member states, the world is on a catastrophic pathway to 2.7 degrees Celsius of heating, instead of 1.5 we all agreed should be the limit. To limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, we need a 45% cut in emissions by 2030 so we can reach carbon neutrality by mid-century. Instead, the commitments made until now by countries imply an increase of 16% in greenhouse gas emissions — not a decrease of 45% — an increase of 16% in greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 compared to 2010 levels.”
Already at a temperature increase of just 1.1 degrees Celsius, we’re witnessing a “new normal” of drought and fires in the western United States while in the East there are floods and hurricanes. More frequent high-intensity storms, combined with sea-level rise, are already impacting major American cities like Houston, New York, Miami, New Orleans, and many others. In fact, Houston has seen major flood events almost every year. Our crops in California (1/3 of US vegetables and 2/3 of US fruits and nuts) and Arizona are threatened by disappearing snowpacks which form our rivers and are essential to our crops. And in Texas, the drought of 2011 could become our new normal, threatening food production and the entire ecosystem. When drought ravages our farmland we will see rising prices at the grocery and more Americans going hungry.
Elsewhere in the world, the present symptoms of climate change are even more severe. In Africa, a continent whose meager emissions have contributed little to our climate catastrophe, there is growing famine in many areas. In Asia, the Himalayan glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, threatening the water supply and crops of 3 billion people dependent on these glaciers and the great rivers that come from them. In Central America, the devastating effects of climate change have already started migration northward leading to the crisis at our southern border we see today. These growing disasters will translate into national security issues for the United States, as violence and death follow.
In the Amazon, Central Africa, Indonesia and other tropical forests, the lungs of the world are burning and being cut down, while our acidifying oceans simply cannot absorb more emissions.
We can no longer delay switching our fossil fuel energy production to renewable sources such as wind and solar farms. Such change has the additional benefit of providing more jobs than fossil fuel, at higher pay with far greater worker safety and health.
While many world leaders talk about the existential threat of climate change, their plans to combat it and thus protect us are severely lacking. Here in the US, President Biden touts his plan, while at the same time allowing the following:
- over 2400 new drilling permits by August 1
- continued fracking on private land and even some public lands
- continued construction of major pipelines including Line 3
- Sen. Manchin’s protection of coal’s future.
We, as concerned citizens, constituents, parents, and grandparents of those who will suffer the dire consequences of OUR actions and failures to act, implore you to use every available resource to spur President Biden and our national policies to action! The UN Climate Conference in Glasgow is our opportunity to again lead the world and begin the radical, inevitable transformation of the global economy necessary to survive in the coming decades and centuries.