Nov 30, 2018 3 min read

The fact that the Trump administration and most Republicans in Congress take the head-in-the-sand approach to climate change has no impact whatsoever on whether climate change is real. It is, and a major scientific report released last week by 13 federal agencies ratcheted up the warnings about what will happen if these so-called leaders follow their current path of doing as little as humanly possible to address the crisis.

As reported by The New York Times:

“Mr. Trump has taken aggressive steps to allow more planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks, and has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, under which nearly every country in the world pledged to cut carbon emissions. Just this week, he mocked the science of climate change because of a cold snap in the Northeast, tweeting, ‘Whatever happened to Global Warming?’

“But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast.”

Philip B. Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center, summed it up this way: “There is a bizarre contrast between this report, which is being released by this administration, and this administration’s own policies.”

The report says climate change “is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us.” It notes how global warming from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas is harming every region of the country and will increase diseases and deaths. The report puts the figure of how much warming is caused by humans at 90 percent.

The response from the Trump administration was predictable. Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders contended that the report was “not based on facts.” That’s balderdash. It’s based on facts that the administration finds highly inconvenient. She claimed, presumably with a straight face, that the administration is committed to having the world’s cleanest air and water.

Trump, himself, turned a deaf ear to the findings, saying, “I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of it. … I don’t believe it.”

Trump and congressional Republicans appear mostly focused on protecting fossil fuel industries and other moneyed interests that have and will continue to bankroll their campaigns. They say complying with the Paris Agreement and other efforts to stem the tide of climate change would be devastating to our economy. But have they even considered the alternatives?

The newly issued report says the projected climate impacts would carry a cost of $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by century’s end, the Times reported.

Certainly, there are major costs associated with reducing the impact of climate change, but the costs of ignoring it are much higher, and deadlier, for people around the globe.

The United States has always viewed itself as a leader in the world. It should act like one now.