Howling Into The Void - Despite The Rhetoric, Despite The Eco-Woke, Nothing Moves The Warming Needle
EDIT
Last year, the world's climate science experts -- the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- released a report issuing some deadlines based on the harsh realities of science and math. They said global carbon pollution must be cut in half by 2030 and reduced to net zero by 2050 to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, which include drowned coastal cities, worsening storms and the virtual end of coral reefs.
There is a global push to try to meet those goals. That takes the form of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which urges countries to cut emissions but fails to issue sanctions. The United States, which has done more to cause global warming historically than any other nation, has promised under the Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. ow far along are we on those pollution-reduction goals? We haven't really started.
EDIT
Part of the issue is a failure to recognize the magnitude of the problem -- or, as others have written, a failure to care about the massive debts we are pushing onto future generations. Researchers like Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, have argued that people are finally waking up to the climate crisis, particularly in the face of the Trump administration, which has denied the science and enlivened activists, and in light of the apocalyptic-seeming severe weather that has hit parts of the globe.
A poll from that Yale group showed in 2018 that 59% of Americans were "alarmed" or "concerned" about global warming, which is up compared with the previous five years.
Those concerns don't necessarily translate into political action, though. A 2018 report from Gallup found that climate change ranked as only the 11th most important issue for American voters -- behind health care, the economy, immigration, the treatment of women in US society, gun policy, taxes, foreign affairs, income and wealth distribution, Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court and US trade and tariff policies.
Think about that in terms of the World War II analogy. Imagine the American public ranking WWII as No. 11 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
EDIT
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/21/world/sutter-earth-day-climate-scn/index.html