Let's Agree To Agree

By Bergin Parks on 05/31/2012 @ 11:36 AM

Tags: Energy, Environment

Today, Jim Moran of Virginia will introduce a house resolution intended to give members of the house the opportunity to acknowledge - publicly - that climate change is a real problem that poses real threats to people in the U.S. and across the globe.

I visited the Huffington Post Website this morning, as I do most mornings, and was immediately confronted with three stories that are directly related to climate change.

The largest wildfire in the history of the state of New Mexico has burned 265 square miles in the Gila National Forest as of this morning. “Experts say the mammoth fire may be just a preview of what's to come in part of the western United States after months of drought and dry conditions.”

There is concern that the spread of Chagas disease will be exacerbated by climate change. "Endemic Chagas disease has emerged as an important health disparity in the Americas," the authors wrote. "As a result, we face a situation in both Latin America and the US that bears a resemblance to the early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We know the bugs are already across the bottom two-thirds of the U.S., so the bugs are here, the parasites are here. Very likely with climate change they will shift further north and the range of some species will extend," Dorn told Science Daily."

And last but not least, it was reported that the global average atmospheric content of CO2, the pollutant predominately attributable to climate change, has reached 395 parts per million. It stands at 400 ppm in the Arctic. “But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.”

Such a defeatist stance is no longer acceptable. Whether or not the warming is human caused or not is an irrelevant question that shamefully ignores the underlying issue. The risks exist. Shouldn’t they be enough to catalyze meaningful action? Moran’s resolution provides the opportunity to begin this discussion.

Please endorse the resolution.