Americans reap whirlwind as many turn blind eye to climate
THERE is absolutely nothing Americans won’t politicise or disagree on. As Joe Biden’s bumbling now dominates the States and Donald Trump’s legacy lingers like a bad smell, the country remains at each other’s throats.
But despite the divide over Covid vaccines, abortion rights and gun laws still raging, there is nothing more incendiary to Americans than climate change.
It is by far the number one issue that separates voters here.
So this week, following the devastating tornadoes that claimed close to 100 lives across the US, Mother Nature once again barrelled into the political arena.
As rescue workers still searched for the missing, Biden wasted no time to point his finger at climate change for the devastation.
“All that I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impact as a consequence of the warming of the planet and the climate change,” he said.
“The specific impact on these specific storms, I can’t say at this point. I’m going to be asking the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and others to take a look.”
It was followed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency boss, who deals with such tragedies, saying the hordes of twisters that ripped across a swathe of the US was “the new normal”.
Much like Britain, with what seems its ever-increasing floods, natural disasters here, although not unprecedented, seem to be occurring at unusual times of the year.
December is an odd time of year for tornadoes but fueled by unusually warm air – temperatures in the area were more than 20 degrees above average – they created atmospheric conditions more akin to April than the weeks before Christmas.
It came after a freakish freezing spell in February killed more than 200 people and left millions without power in Texas.
Elsewhere in the world in 2021, a crippling sandstorm turned the
Beijing sky a weird orange colour, while months later China’s Henan province saw more than a year’s worth of rainfall in just three days resulting in 300 deaths.
Around the same time, whole villages were washed out by flooding rivers as torrential rain killed nearly 200 people in Holland, Germany and Belgium.
Climate change deniers highlight there is yet no scientific support for the claim that tornados or any other form of deadly extreme weather are on the increase.
It is a point here in America – the world’s second-biggest polluter – millions use as the reason why they refuse to play their part in helping Mother Nature.
Rather than move to clean, renewable energy, they insist on keeping such things as their five-litre gas-guzzling trucks.
Thousands even still back
Trump’s delusion in reopening the mines and burning “big beautiful coal”.
Climate change may or may not have played a role in last weekend’s deadly US storms, but even for a growing dinosaur like me, there is a bunch of circumstantial evidence suggesting it did.
No smoking gun proves our destruction of the environment played a role in the tornados, but there is unquestionably a strong smell of gunpowder.
We would be foolish not to take this year’s brutal events as a critical warning.
By continuing to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, are we not baiting nature into doing its worst? Surely there are some things we can all agree on for the sake of future generations.
THIS week, it was welcome news that American Anne Sacoolas is due to face criminal proceedings in the UK charged with causing teenager Harry Dunn’s death by dangerous driving.
The mother-of-three, 44, is accused of killing the 19-year-old in a road crash outside US military base RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire on August 27, 2019.
The Sacoolas case will be heard at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on January 18, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
It is understood she will appear via video link.
Nineteen days after the incident outside US military base RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire, she returned to her home state in the USA claiming diplomatic immunity.
The CPS decided to charge Sacoolas with causing Harry’s death by dangerous driving in December 2019.
Hopefully, the trial will help repair some of the damage America caused by allowing such an evasion of justice in the first place.
More importantly, let us hope it brings, whatever the verdict, the closure’s Harry parents so desperately deserve.
Thousands even still back Trump’s delusion in burning ‘big beautiful coal’