This column is by Madeleine May Kunin, a Democrat who was the 77th governor of Vermont, serving from 1985 until 1991. She is the author of “Coming of Age, My Journey to the Eighties.” Her new book of poetry is “Red Kite, Blue Sky.”
Climate change is here. An even hotter future is inevitable, according to an intergovernmental panel on climate change convened by the United Nations. The earth’s temperature has already risen 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880.
Frightening news.
I’m not so scared for myself. My life has already been good. I’m in my 80s. But I fear for the children and their children, and the children after that. How will they manage to live in what is now likely to be a burning, or flooding, or drought-seared world?
The photos we see on television on the evening news of runaway red roofs and cars floating downstream upside down will be more common.
Watching a Midwest farmer standing by his drought-stricken cornfield will no longer be newsworthy.
Any natural catastrophe is likely to impact the poor more drastically than the rich, or even the upper middle class, who can easily move to dryer land or find needed rain. We cannot passively accept the most dire predictions that will punish the world’s most vulnerable populations.
Climate change expert Piers Forster told The New York Times, “We can expect a significant jump in extreme weather in the next 20 or 30 years.”
But there is still hope, if we act now. “There’s no going back from some changes in the climate system,” according Ko Barrett, vice chair of the U.N. panel. She added immediate and sustained emission cuts “could really make a difference in the climate future we have ahead of us.”
“Immediacy” is the key word. The climate legislation pending in Congress is imperative, not simply a Democratic priority, or a Biden priority. It is an imperative human priority to sustain
human life on Planet Earth.
A livable Planet Earth is the heritage we must leave to the world’s children.
