Editorial: Hot off the presses: The climate is changing, requiring bold action
During the Trump administration, even as the federal Environmental Protection Agency claimed to care about, you know, protecting the environment, officials sat on an alarming scientific report with vivid new details about our warming planet while the White House called for burning coal, gas and other fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow.
After three years of delays, the data is now out, and it reveals “multiple lines of evidence that climate change is occurring now and here in the U.S., affecting public health and the environment.” To wit:
Heat waves are occurring about three times as often as in the 1960s. Wildfires are bigger, and they start earlier in the year. At almost every place measured in Alaska, permafrost — the thick layer of soil beneath the soil that ought to stay frozen throughout the year — has warmed since 1978. The EPA found floods to be “now at least five times more common than they were in the 1950s” at more than half of the East Coast locations studied. Even if you loathe us supposed coastal elites, spare a thought for poor Carolinians, Floridians, Georgians and Texans.
The last time the EPA published such indicators was 2016. The inattention could not slow the warming, proving again that an unwatched pot often boils.
But don’t just worry about a downward spiral if the U.S. and the world fail to act; be motivated to embrace America’s energy future. The International Energy Agency last week reported that renewable power grew at a rapid clip, making up 90% of the energy sector’s total global growth last year. Expect the trend to continue as the U.S. continues approving solar and wind, like the first major offshore turbine farm, which will generate enough electricity to power nearly half a million homes. (We only wish activists would embrace zero-emissions nuclear power with the same fervor.)
The planet is warming, and human activity is the reason. Fortunately, finally, the other thing that’s heating up is human determination to turn the tide.
