“ ‘We’ve passed into a ferocious new phase of global heating with much worse to come. Biden must declare a climate emergency.’”
That’s the no-nonsense call to action leveled directly at U.S. President Joe Biden from one of the world’s leading climate scientists and authors, Peter Kalmus, who wrote an opinion piece this week in The Guardian.
The op-ed printed in the same week that international weather organizations declared July the hottest month ever for Earth and within days of the United Nations’ head declaring a new era of “global boiling” beyond just global warming. It’s also the same week that Biden convened a White House rollout of federal help to make communities, especially outdoor workers, more resilient against extreme heat, like the “real-feel” temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit hitting New York and much of the I-95 corridor Friday after scorching other parts of the country earlier.
Around 150 million people, or about half the U.S. population, are under heat alerts. Wildfires that send smoke into the U.S. continue to burn in Canada, while the ocean off south Florida reached “hot tub temps” in recent days. Scientists and policy-makers blame man-made climate change from driving cars, wasting food and constantly running technology, as well as a boost from a warming El Niño, the recurring weather phenomenon whose latest impact, scientists say, is only beginning.
Kalmus, who can claim a prolific batch of published scientific papers from work with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and elsewhere, and was once sanctioned by the scientific community for protest, ramped up his rebuke from there.
“We are careening toward fossil-fueled heatwaves that will kill over a million people in single events. And it will not plateau there: more fossil fuels
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more heat, more death. The only way out is to end fossil fuels,” he wrote. “No amount of tree planting, recycling, carbon offsetting, or wishful carbon-capture thinking will ever change this.”
“ ‘I have no doubt that fossil fuel executives and lobbyists — and those who chose to stand with them — will, in the future, be considered criminals.’”
And Kalmus called out Biden, in particular, leader of the world’s largest economy and the second-largest polluter after China and just ahead of India, by some measures. When population differences are considered, the U.S. can be ranked first.
“Biden’s refusal to declare a climate emergency and his eagerness to push new pipelines and new drilling — at an even faster pace than Trump — goes against science, goes against common sense, goes against life on Earth,” Kalmus wrote. “In the world of politics-as-usual, with its short-term goals and calculus of ‘safer to follow than to lead,’ I suppose there are reasons and rationalizations for this planet-destroying choice.”
And he continued: “Speaking as a scientist, it seems ignorant and short-sighted. It’s certainly a form of climate denial. And I have no doubt that fossil fuel executives and lobbyists — and those who chose to stand with them — will, in the future, be considered criminals.”
The voracity of the remarks prompted Biden’s traveling press corps to push the White House for a response Friday to the charge that not declaring a “climate emergency” was, in fact, anti-science.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the president’s press secretary, who had spoken on Biden’s climate efforts earlier, said, “I don’t really have much more to add to what I just laid out about what we’ve been able to do. The president believes in science, which is why he talks about climate change, which is why he said the climate crisis is real, right?”
Jean-Pierre, who was interrupted during remarks this week by a Gen Z audience member demanding more climate action, in recent days has offered a list of federal spending and other White House initiatives that she argues means Biden has done more on climate change than any other administration.
“His economic agenda has already led to over $100 billion in private sector investments in domestic clean energy manufacturing. He put the United States back on track to reach clean energy goals, reducing U.S. greenhouse emissions in half by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050. … [T]hese things are going to make a difference as we’re dealing with climate change,” she said.
This post was originally published on Market Watch
