Pending Bill on Climate Change Contains Fossil Fuel Measures That Add to a Threat to Today’s Children
Similar Disregard of Children's Right to Life on Climate Change, Racial Wealth Gap, and Agent Orange Birth Defects
Real Reason for the US-Viet Nam War
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Publication: each Saturday by 9 a.m. East Coast US time. Editions alternate between: (1) the hidden 1870s–1954 US colonial period in Viet Nam, and (2) a common pattern of racism in that hidden, early US activity in Viet Nam and in US society.
Prior issues may be viewed at https://briandroesch.substack.com/
Cites for some facts are in Roesch, B. (2021). Corporate Tsunami in Countryside Paradise: 1875–1900 Origin of US War in Viet Nam, First Edition Revised. See briandroesch.com
Pending Bill on Climate Change Contains Fossil Fuel Measures That Add to a Threat to Today’s Children
US leaders are near to approval of a bill that adds fossil fuel leases that, according to Bloomberg News, “include several things likely on Exxon’s wish list, such as locking in lease sales, and even pairing renewable rights to oil and gas lease sales.”[i]
An increasing threat to children due to past inaction on climate change is identified by David Wallace-Wells in The Uninhabitable Earth, a book praised by reviewers including the New York Public Library, Toronto Star, and The Economist:[ii]
Whatever we do to stop warming, and however aggressively we act to protect ourselves from its ravages, we will have pulled the devastation of human life on Earth into view—close enough that we can see clearly what it would look like and know, with some degree of precision, how it will punish our children and grandchildren.
On climate change, US leaders have wasted almost one-third of a 12-year period in which emergency measures must be taken to curb severe climate change. The 12-year warning came in October 2018, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Well over 90 percent of scientists in the field issued that warning on global warming caused by fossil fuel use. A big part of the human struggle is to try to keep Earth below a 1.5C degree temperature increase. If the increase is beyond 1.5C, catastrophic weather will greatly increase. Despite the dire situation and warning, in 2020 the US government pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. Following that blow, in 2021 the US right wing blocked enough funding to take effective action to help the desperate struggle of Earth’s population to respond to the IPCC alarm.[iii]
Of the bill, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, an August 5 Counterpunch article says it:[iv]
will face a predicament that’s already deeply embedded.. . . scientists’ concerns about rapid climate change know that effective mitigation requires much stronger measures, much sooner.
This is even though the bill does some good, as Counterpunch points out, presenting the real problem:
. . . analysts say that it would cut emissions to forty per cent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.
Thus, the bill (except for provisions that actually promote more fossil fuel usage) is not bad but also not good enough according to what’s needed to actually mitigate global warming (caused by fossil fuel usage). Accordingly, scientists’ concerns about rapid climate change know that effective mitigation requires much stronger measures, much sooner.
The accelerating risk of catastrophe by climate change for today’s young people is like a car carrying children and accelerating toward a cliff. A driver of such a car has a duty to slow the car and not go over the cliff. Many young people see climate change as a threat to their lives. They are shaken by the failure of leaders to take emergency measures sufficient to curb climate change.
Sign carried by youth at demonstration.
Pexels.com
The Uninhabitable Planet describes that among five prior major extinctions of 75 to 96 percent of all species on earth:[v]
The most notorious was 250 million years ago; it began when carbon dioxide warmed the planet by five degrees Celsius, accelerated when that warming triggered the release of methane, another greenhouse gas, and ended with all but a sliver of life on Earth dead. We are currently adding carbon to the atmosphere at a considerably faster rate; by most estimates, at least ten times faster.
Human fossil fuel use is the main cause of the carbon causing today’s global warming, according to an October 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).[vi]
In the face of such danger, the inadequate response by US leaders is similar to some other situations in which they fail to undo damage to children. They have long failed to provide equality compensation to overcome the 12-to-1 (or 10-to-1 in one report) racial wealth gap average between White families and Black families in the US. The gap was caused by 400 years of discrimination, often violent. One purpose of such actions was to provide economic domination for White US citizens over Black US citizens.[vii]
They have also failed to provide quality of life compensation to 150,000 children in Viet Nam, who live with birth defects from Agent Orange/dioxin/toxins spraying. Those children suffer. This group has a high death rate. US leaders sprayed the air for 10 years with Agent Orange/dioxin/toxins. Before the spraying, Viet Nam did not have such a rate of birth defects.[viii]
Photo of child suffering birth defects from Agent Orange/dioxin/toxins
Trienlamdacam.vn
On climate change, Wallace-Wells observes of the human failures to adequately respond, “The climate system that gave rise to the human species . . . has been brought to the brink of total instability by just one generation of human activity.”[ix]
When Tipping Points arrive, the damage to life will dramatically increase. Tipping points are approaching in systems such as polar ice cap reflection and in ocean currents. The National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains:[x]
Basically tipping points are small changes within the climate system that can change a fairly stable system to a very different state. Similar to a wine glass tipping over, wine is spilt from the glass as the tipping event occurs and standing up the glass will not put the wine back.
Even before the pending arrival of tipping points, global warming has caused much of Earth to be hit by major disasters. In the US, on the afternoon and overnight of Dec 10–11, 2021, 71 tornadoes struck. When tipping points arrive, the unstable air will create storms that can be much worse.[xi]
The $37 billion per year for 10 years that the government bill proposes to spend on climate change is less than 1/20 of the military budget per year of about $759 billion. What does that small fraction teach the children about whether adults care about the threat to children of climate change, after the adults have passed away?[xii]
[i] Exxon CEO Loves What Manchin Did for Big Oil in $370 Billion Deal. By Kevin Crowley July 29, 2022 at 9:49 PM GMT+7.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-29/exxon-s-woods-calls-manchin-bill-step-in-the-right-direction
[ii] Reviews, threat to children. Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth. Crown, p. 17, Kindle Locations 4, 314.
[iii] https://www.vox.com/2018/10/8/17948832/climate-change-global-warming-un-ipcc-report Umair Irfan (Oct 8, 2018). Report: we have just 12 years to limit devastating global warming. A UN panel of scientists says every bit of warming matters, and we’re almost out of time to keep it in check.
Trump out of Paris Accord. www.bbc.com › news › science-environment-54797743
[iv] Inflation Reduction Act lacking. America’s Biggest Reservoirs Hit By Dead Pool Jitters BY ROBERT HUNZIKER (AUGUST 5, 2022)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/05/americas-biggest-reservoirs-hit-by-dead-pool-jitters/
[v] Extinctions. Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, Kindle Location 133.
[vi] https://www.vox.com/2018/10/8/17948832/climate-change-global-warming-un-ipcc-report Umair Irfan (Oct 8, 2018). Report: we have just 12 years to limit devastating global warming. A UN panel of scientists says every bit of warming matters, and we’re almost out of time to keep it in check.
[vii] Racial wealth gap. 12-to-1. Baradaran, M. (2017). The Color of Money: Black Banks and the racial wealth gap. Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p. 249, Kindle Location 5243. 10-to-1. Hannah-Jones, N., Roper, Caitlin, Silverman, Ilena, Silverstein, Jake, & New York Times Company. (2021). The 1619 Project: A new origin story (First ed.). New York: One World, pp. 470–75. Nearly 5,000 lynchings 1885–1960; no conviction record, supremacy tool, economic purpose. Ifill, S. (2018). On the Courthouse lawn : Confronting the legacy of lynching in the twenty-first century. Revised Kindle Edition. Boston: Beacon Press, pp. xvi, 28, 75–76, Kindle locations 139 (economic), 147–160, 754 (economic) 1544– 1549.
[viii] Children with birth defects. trienlamdacam.vn
[ix] One generation, brink. Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, p. 244, Kindle Location 3278.
[x] Feedack loops, tipping points. https://gml.noaa.gov/education/info_activities/pdfs/TBI_understanding_feedback_loops.pdf
[xi] https://www.weather.gov/pah/December-10th-11th-2021-Tornado Dec 10–11 2021 Tornado Event
[xii] 759 billion https://executivegov.com/articles/u-s-defense-budget-2022-how-much-does-the-united-states-spend-on-its-defense-budget/