“Climate Change Calls for Action! Don’t opt for hopelessness!”

By Linn Smith

July 31, 2016—-We currently have a presidential candidate that wants to repeal the Climate Action Plan, renew the permit application for the Keystone Pipeline, lift the moratoriums on energy production on federal lands, cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to the U.N. global warming programs. Yes, that would be Donald Trump!

Climate Change: Saving Our Planet

Andy Barowitz wrote an article for the New Yorker magazine using polls conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute. In this article he explained that most people are very frustrated with trying to explain the crises we are headed for to people who don’t want to listen. “Of the many obvious things that people are sick and tired of trying to get through the skulls of deniers, is the fact that climate change will cause catastrophic habitat destruction and devastating extinctions–this tops the list for people trying to explain our earth’s future catastrophes, with a majority saying they will no longer try to explain this to deniers!”

A Vote for Donald Trump is a Vote Against Saving Our Planet

But I’m going to say it again! A vote for Trump will result in destruction to our planet. If you really and truly don’t care about the mess we leave our children and grandchildren, or you opt to melt into a useless puddle of hopelessness, which I have often seen lately, you can quit reading now. (And for the Bernie supporters, the world is full of flaws and imperfections–we all gotta deal with it on a regular basis!)

Here are some facts which your children and grandchildren will have to endure during his or her lifetime. This information, from the United Nations and EPA websites, is a result of computer models which have allowed scientists to average all possible scenarios for our planet:

* By 2100, the average U.S. temperature is projected to increase by about 3-12 degrees F, depending on the scenarios and climate model used.
* There will be reduced ice and snow cover.
* Sea levels are on the rise and will continue to do so.
* There will be an increased frequency and duration of extreme weather events.
* The number of days with high temperatures above 90 degrees is expected to increase throughout the U.S., and globally, especially toward the end of century.
* Ground level air temperatures are expected to continue to warm more rapidly over land.
* The combination of crops yielding less, due to climate change and overpopulation of our earth, is going to lead to starvation of many.

* There will be more heat related deaths.
* Winter weather patterns will move northward with southern areas having more rain than snow.
* There will be an increase in the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes.
* Forest fires are on the rise and will continue at an accelerated pace.
* An increase in diseases, which is on the rise today.
* An increase in civil disorder due to disease and food shortages.
* There will be an extinction of many animals (including eventually ourselves)……..and this list could go on!

These changes will impact our food supply, water resources, infrastructure, ecosystems, and our own health!

El Nino’s Impact

Don Paul of the Buffalo News states, “We have now experienced our 14th consecutive record warm month globally, far beyond the range of El Nino’s impact. These are broad climate trends not short term weather trends. There are uncertainties about how fast global warming will continue to take place in the future but scientists agree, it will take place, with peaks and valleys in daily local weather patterns.”

If we stabilize greenhouse gases today, surface air temperatures will continue to warm because greenhouse gases can stay in our atmosphere for hundreds of years. But it is still possible to limit the increase in global mean temperatures to two degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels, when the earth’s temperature began to increase. We need to act now!

When you vote in the 2016 election vote for a healthy planet!

Do the Next Right Thing!