Unlike pandemics or wars, climate crisis won’t wane

This pandemic could have been nearly mitigated if our defaulting legislators had not allowed this unfit president to use it for political gains. In his familiar disinformation rhetoric he discredits the international medical community while claiming ineffective and dangerous remedies.

His dreadful decisions to conduct large political gatherings, without requiring (even discouraging) masks and social spacing, can only increase the COVID-19 death counts.

Despite the severity of this pandemic, climate change still poses the greatest threats to our planet’s habitability. Unlike pandemics or wars, which eventually end, warming will only worsen as populations increase, while food and water supplies diminish from losses of acreage and rising seas.

It will self perpetuate as methane and carbon dioxide are released from themelting Arctic regions and eventually reach non-reversing tipping points. As world energy consumption continues its unabated rise, energy industries continue their wars on the environment by perpetuating fossil fuels and forestalling clean energy development with disinformation and their stranglehold on our politicians.

Ironically, measures for mitigating pandemics, such as reduced consumption and efficiency improvements, parallel those for mitigating climate change. It would be criminally remiss for our legislators to ignore this incentive.