Why Won't the Democrats Hold a Climate Change Debate?

[pnwmom]

22. We'll have lost another 2 years before the next President takes office, after going backwards

for the duration of DT's time.

During the next administration, we have to do a lot more than begin acting on climate change. We have to hit the ground running, and for that we need to have the public with us. A debate devoted to the issue would help.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/opinions/one-year-to-tackle-climate-change-opinion-mountford/index.html

But there is a problem with this timeline: We don't have 12 years to jump-start action on climate change -- we have just one.

According to an article in the journal Nature, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak no later than next year and rapidly decline thereafter for us to have a good chance of preventing increasingly severe consequences from the climate crisis -- everything from imperiled croplands, flooded communities and widespread disease. Delaying any longer will push us toward an ecological tipping point, with no way for humanity to claw its way back out.

Next year is also a critical point because it is when country leaders agreed to put forward new climate plans when they adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015. They knew that the climate action commitments in Paris would not be enough, and so they agreed to come back in five years to step up their efforts. We will soon find out if prime ministers and presidents will stand by their word. Collectively, these revised plans will point humanity to a future that is either bright or bleak.


https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/would-gw-stop-with-greenhouse-gases/

If we immediately stopped emitting greenhouses gases, would global warming stop?
Not right away. The Earth’s surface temperature does not react instantaneously to the energy imbalance created by rising carbon dioxide levels. This delayed reaction occurs because a great deal of the excess energy is stored in the ocean, which has a tremendous heat capacity. Because of this lag (which scientists call “thermal inertia”), even the 0.6–0.9 degrees of global warming we have observed in the past century is not the full amount of warming we can expect from the greenhouse gases we have already emitted. Even if all emissions were to stop today, the Earth’s average surface temperature would climb another 0.6 degrees or so over the next several decades before temperatures stopped rising.

The time lag is one reason why there is a risk in waiting to control greenhouse gas emissions until global warming becomes worse or its effects more serious and obvious. If we wait until we feel the amount or impact of global warming has reached an intolerable level, we will not be able to “hold the line” at that point; some further warming will be unavoidable.