Our leaders cannot allow the Earth to become an unbearable hothouse

During the recent congressional debate over increasing the national debt ceiling, GOP legislators expressed great concern about burdening future generations with massive public indebtedness. They overlooked the simple fact that requiring corporate giants and the billionaire class to pay their fair share of taxes could significantly reduce that burden. Many of the same legislators appear to have no compunctions about condemning future generations to an unbearably hot planet.

Our descendants will undoubtedly be confounded by our utter disregard for the present scientific consensus that Earth is in the grip of a climate change disaster. They will wonder how we could have been so stupid or selfish as to refuse to take reasonable action to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

The signs are everywhere. One recent headline warns that the “World is on the brink of catastrophic warming,” citing a United Nations climate change report. Another notes that, “The last 8 years were the hottest on record.” The planet’s oceans are warming at an alarming rate, reaching a record temperature last year, which exceeded the 2021 record, which eclipsed the  2020 record. That contributed to violent and costly weather disasters across the country last year. Last week, New Yorkers choked on smoke from massive Canadian forest fires that have resulted from rapid Arctic warming. Those and other massive fires around the world over the last several years have released billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere

Of course, the effects of global warming are not confined to the United States. Similar climate catastrophes are occurring across the globe and we have not yet seen the worst of it. Scientists tell us we can expect the melting of the Greenland ice sheet to contribute to a one-foot global sea level rise, even if we immediately stop greenhouse gas emissions. Rapid melting of Antarctic ice will inevitably contribute even more to a rise in sea levels around the world.

Despite this clear-cut evidence of the unfolding climate disaster, right-wing Republicans in Congress refuse to lift a finger to respond. Rather, they parrot the false claims of their fossil fuel masters that it is all a big hoax. Earth’s future generations will undoubtedly devote a good deal of time cursing them for their failure to heed the dire warnings of the scientific community.

It is not as if our descendants will just have to get better air conditioners and stronger sunscreen. Unless we take dramatic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the very existence of life on planet Earth will be endangered.

The U.N. tells us that the violent weather, which has become the norm today, threatens the world’s supply of food and clean water. In turn, global food and water insecurity poses a serious threat to America’s national security, according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Indeed, hunger and thirst brought about by climate change will cause unimaginable mass migrations from have-not nations across the world, particularly Latin America, Africa and South Asia, endangering the stability of nations better equipped to cope, unless decisive climate action is taken. We have already received a foretaste of hunger-related migration on the U.S. southern border. As they say, we “ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” unless the GOP pitches in to avert the crisis.

But that is not all that we can expect from continued inaction. Climate scientists make the case that massive greenhouse gas emissions resulted in a number of mass extinction events in Earth’s past. The best comparison to present-day global warming occurred about 56 million years ago when massive volcanic emission levels, roughly comparable to the almost 40 billion tons we spew into the atmosphere each year, caused what is called the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, which resulted in the catastrophic destruction of flora and fauna across the globe. According to the geologic and fossil record, it took more than 150,000 years for the Earth to recover.

This may all sound alarmist, but it is time to get alarmed and activated. We are staring at a threat to the very existence of many life forms on the planet. Unlike the debt limit fight that the GOP recently waged in Congress, there is no easy fix to the challenge of unchecked global warming. If the Republican obstructionists are right and the scientific community dead wrong on the danger, the U.S. will only have to deal with several trillion dollars worth of additional debt. If the GOP naysayers are wrong, we will have lost our planet to their obstinance.

The president’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provides $369 billion for climate solutions, is a modest start. It will energize the private sector to develop green energy alternatives to fossil fuels and remediate damage from greenhouse gas emissions. The war in Ukraine has opened up the eyes of many around the world to the necessity of weaning economies off of fossil fuels for national security concerns. But there must be a concerted effort through new federal legislation to curb the use of fossil fuels if we hope to leave a livable world for future generations. 

Wouldn’t it be comforting to think that America’s posterity would be pleased with how we effectively responded to the climate emergency, rather than cursing us for making their existence a living hell?

Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served 8 years as Idaho attorney general (1983-1991) and 12 years as a justice on the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-2017). He is a regular contributor to The Hill.