FROLITICKS

Under the auspices of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II was recently released.  Thirteen American government departments and agencies, from the Agriculture Department to NASA, were part of the committee that compiled the new report.  Like other similar reports, the White House dismissed the congressionally mandated report as inaccurate. However, this expert report may be a little more difficult to ignore given recent environmental disasters that have occurred in the U.S. and elsewhere. Let’s take a quick look at some of the report’s summary conclusions:

• More frequent and intense extreme weather and climate-related events, as well as changes in average climate conditions, are expected to continue to damage infrastructure, ecosystems, and social systems that provide essential benefits to communities.
• Regional economies and industries that depend on natural resources and favourable climate conditions, such as agriculture, tourism, and fisheries, are vulnerable to the growing impacts of climate change.
• Rising air and water temperatures and changes in precipitation are intensifying droughts, increasing heavy downpours, reducing snowpack, and causing declines in surface water quality, with varying impacts across regions.
• Climate change is also projected to alter the geographic range and distribution of disease-carrying insects and pests, exposing more people to ticks that carry Lyme disease and mosquitoes that transmit viruses such as Zika, West Nile, and dengue, with varying impacts across regions.
• Climate change has already had observable impacts on biodiversity, ecosystems, and the benefits they provide to society.
• An aging and deteriorating infrastructure is further stressed by increases in heavy precipitation events, coastal flooding, heat, wildfires, and other extreme events, as well as changes to average pre­cipitation and temperature.
• Rising water temperatures, ocean acidification, retreating arctic sea ice, sea level rise, high-tide flooding, coastal erosion, higher storm surge, and heavier precipitation events threaten our oceans and coasts.
• Outdoor recreation, tourist economies, and quality of life reliant on benefits provided by our natural environment will be degraded by the impacts of climate change in many ways.

Scientists have once again demonstrated this past year that much of the impact on climate change is caused by man-made emissions, especially that resulting from older technologies using fuels such as coal and oil for producing energy. These conclusions are obviously at odds with the Trump administration’s pro-fossil-fuels agenda.  What this report illustrates is that the economic consequences of continuing on the administration’s course of action are extremely serious, far outweighing any costs to businesses and the economy as a result of implementing policies in support of promoting green technologies and penalizing emitters of greenhouse-gases.

As it is, we will all have to begin to adapt in the short-term to the existing impact of climate change by upgrading our infrastructures, altering our agricultural production and introducing more green technologies. Climate change is a massive threat to long-term growth, and the most economically efficient way of avoiding it is a wide tax on greenhouse-gas emissions. This will force industries and consumers to reduce emissions over time.  Some people will argue that it may already be too late, forcing us to simply adapt to climate change at great immediate cost to everyone.  However, I would argue that drastic circumstances such as those highlighted in the report call for more drastic measures sooner rather than later — not only regionally but globally.  What we need is real honest leadership and vision, not unreal excuses.  We owe it to future generations.