“Climate scientists have shown that our choices now range from merely awful to incomprehensibly horrible.”

Elect @JoeBiden and #FlipTheSenateBlue, so we can put Americans to work saving the goddamned world. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/climate/climate-change-future.html

“People are shielded from the costs of their decisions and thus make bad ones. For instance, local communities reap increased property taxes from allowing buildings to rise in disaster-prone areas but don’t pick up most of the tab for disaster recovery — the federal govt does.”

““Don’t think of it as the warmest month of August in California in the last century,” he wrote. “Think of it as one of the coolest months of August in California in the next century.”

The scary, Orange skies over California would have been even more powerful had they struck Washington, D.C. — then they’d bring about change.

“Even if we start radically slashing emissions today, it could be decades before those changes start to appreciably slow the rate at which Earth is warming. In the meantime, we’ll have to deal with effects that continue to worsen.”

“If we cut emissions rapidly, about one-seventh of the world’s population will suffer severe heat waves every few years. Failure to do so doubles or triples that number.”

“If we act now, sea levels could rise another 1 to 2 feet this century. If we don’t, Antarctica’s ice sheets could destabilize irreversibly and ocean levels could keep rising at an inexorable pace for centuries, making coastal civilization all but unmanageable.”

“States and communities will need to impose tougher regulations on homes built in fire-prone areas.”

“as climate change intensifies, it increases the risk of compound hazards, when numerous disasters strike simultaneously, as well as the risk that one disaster cascades into another.”

This year we had COVID, the fires in California, and the floods in the South.

“In late 2017, large wildfires scorched Santa Barbara, Calif., burning away vegetation that stabilized hillside soils. Heavy rainfall followed a month later, causing devastating mudflows that killed 23 and injured 163.”

“In Houston in 2017, Hurricane Harvey shut down gasoline refineries, strained hospitals and spread toxic substances and pathogens as floodwaters swamped the city.”