Time Is Running Out For Our Planet Part 6
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he report continues with the prediction that frequent wildfires, long a plague of the Western United States, will also become more common in other regions, including the Southeast. The 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires, which killed 14 people and burned more than 17,000 acres in Tennessee, may have been just the beginning.
More than 100 million people in the US live in places with poor air quality and climate change will "worsen existing air pollution levels”. Increased wildfire smoke risks heightening respiratory and cardiovascular problems, while the prevalence of asthma and hay fever is also likely to rise.
Major groundwater supplies have declined over the last century, with this decrease accelerating since 2001. "Significant changes in water quantity and quality are evident across the country,” the report finds.
Climate change will "disrupt many areas of life” by hurting the US economy, affecting trade and exacerbating overseas conflicts. Low-income and marginalized communities will be worst hit. Two areas of impact particularly stand out: trade and agriculture.
Trade Disruptions
Climate change is likely to be a disruptive force in trade and manufacturing, the report says.
Extreme weather events driven by global warming are "virtually certain to increasingly affect U.S. trade and economy, including import and export prices and businesses with overseas operations and supply chains,” the report concludes. Such disasters will temporarily shutter factories both in the United States and abroad, causing price spikes for products from apples to automotive parts, the scientists predicted. So much of the supply chain for American companies is overseas that almost no industry will be immune from the effects of climate change at home or abroad, the report says. It cites as an example the extreme flooding in Thailand in 2011. Western Digital, an American company that produces 60 percent of its hard drives there, sustained $199 million in losses and halved its hard drive shipments in the last quarter of 2011. The shortages temporarily doubled hard drive prices, affecting other American companies like Apple, HP and Dell.
Agricultural Risks
The nation’s farm belt is likely to be among the hardest-hit regions, and farmers in particular will see their bottom lines threatened. "Rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, wildfire on rangel ands and heavy downpours are expected to increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity in the U.S.,” the report says. "Expect increases in challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality and changes in extreme events in the United States and abroad.” By 2050, the scientists forecast, changes in rainfall and hotter temperatures will reduce the agricultural productivity of the Midwest to levels last seen in the 1980s!
During the 2012 Midwestern drought, farmers who incorporated conservation practices fared better but federal programs designed to help farmers cope with climate change have stalled because the farm bill, the primary legislation for agricultural subsidies, expired in the fall of 2018.
The report says the Midwest, as well as the Northeast, will also experience more flooding when it rains, like the 2011 Missouri River flood that inundated a nuclear power plant near Omaha, forcing it to shut down for years. Other parts of the country, including much of the Southwest, will endure worsening droughts, further taxing limited groundwater supplies. "How many wake-up calls do we need?” Carol Werner, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a policy nonprofit in Washington, D.C., asked in a recent statement. "Every new National Climate Assessment has built on the previous one, confirming that climate change is already happening and that we need to act. Time is running out. … Sadly, the fact that the current administration releases this important report on the Friday after Thanksgiving clearly shows its desire to squelch its impact.”
We, as a nation, CANNOT accept such dangerous short-sightedness from our leaders! Climate change is real and if not addressed, will have devastating effects on our planet and our lives and some damage already incurred may be irreversible. We must elect only those who are committed to developing strategies and solutions, rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, and along with our corporate leaders and tech giants, harness America’s ingenuity and tap that ‘can-do’ attitude that developed the breakthrough technologies and systems that took us to the moon in less than ten years.
