League of Women Voters of the Northampton Area

Please contact our legislators, national and state, and insist that they make climate change a top priority.  Two new reports on climate change, international and national, were just released: “It’s happening.  It’s here. Act now to prevent environmental and economic disaster.”

Click on photo to U.S. Climate Report Warns of Damaged Environment and Shrinking Economy, NYTimes, 11/23/18

“Our world is warming at an unprecedented and accelerating rate and the window to effectively mitigate and adapt to the increasingly devasting impacts of climate change is closing fast. Climate change is here now impacting our lives, the environment and our economy in an unprecedented manner. Major efforts to decarbonize our global society and transition to a clean energy economy must be made within the next 10 to 12 years. Failure to take bold action now will result in a future with conditions beyond our capacity and resources to respond and cope. These are key findings of the UN International Panel on Climate Change Special Reportreleased on October 8, 2018 and the National Assessment on Climate Changereleased on November 23, 2018, with details laid out in stark and unambiguous language.

Warnings from the scientific community about the need to address the causes of climate change have been sounded since well before the First UN IPCC report. What marks these latest reports is the clarity and unequivocal nature of their findings. In part, the tone of these reports reflects growing concern within the scientific community over the lack of leadership and progress at a national and international level – the scale required to deal with the scope of the problem.

Climate change has been largely left on the cutting-room floor of political agendas and the public’s concern because of the complexity and political difficulty of the issue. Even with the growing evidence that climate change is a clear and present threat that will grow far worse if ignored, it will be easy for it to slip back down or completely off the queue of concerns unless the public – you and I – insist that our elected officials prioritize action on climate starting now. Our future literally depends on it.” Launa Zimarrow, LWVMA climate change specialist

The national report is the fourth National Climate Assessment mandated by Congress to be released every four years.  The repost was written by officials from 13 federal agencies and scientists outside of the government.

Their astounding conclusion was the impending economic disaster across the U.S. if we don’t rapidly move to zero carbon emissions.  WE CANNOT AFFORD CLIMATE INACTION!. “The last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015”. And that doesn’t include the cost of natural disasters in 2018!  Ecosystem damage to water, soil, air, and biodiversity are projected to cause annual losses in some economic sectors, such as agriculture, to reach hundreds of billions of dollars annually by the end of the century, if we fail to reduce the rate of climate change.