You ain't seen nothin' yet!

In response to my op-ed, a reader emailed me a lengthy and thoughtful note.  In that, he--an octogenarian-worries that we are screwing things up and writes:

I think it is essential that we humans do everything we can to make life for our descendants at least as good as it has been for us and much better if we can.

He wrapped up his follow-up email--yep, a follow-up--with:

Whatever will be, will be. People's actions more or less are controlled by fate; who would, had they used their senses, ever selected a president like the US has now?

Yep, there is no rational explanation for how we ended up with the current president; we can only blame our ill-luck, our fate!

The president, so adored that 63 million voted for him, does not seem to worry even a tad that we might be messing things up for our descendants. To this president, climate change is all bah, humbug!  Which is why his national security strategy does not refer to climate change. It is not a global threat, he says. And, hey, if he says, then it must be true.  After all, 63 million voted for him, and they--many of them devout Christians--certainly would never have voted for a liar, when it was his opponent who was "crooked," right?

Oh well!

"America first" apparently does not include future generation Americans, leave alone future generations of the rest of the world.  Seriously, 63 million votes for this man?

But, whether the nincompoop and his 63 million voters recognize it or not, climate change is already happening and we are already experiencing its effects.  Like the extreme weather events.

researchers around the world analyzed 27 extreme weather events from 2016 and found that human-caused climate change was a “significant driver” for 21 of them.

Climate scientists are, well, scientists, which means that unless they can be certain they are not going to point to the remaining six also as results of climate weirding.  But, methinks that climate scientists are being too cautious.

And, of course, there is already significant migration happening as a result of climate change, and it will worsen rapidly:

The scale of this challenge is unlike anything humanity has ever faced. By midcentury, climate change is likely to uproot far more people than World War II, which displaced some 60 million across Europe, or the Partition of India, which affected approximately 15 million. The migration crisis that has gripped Europe since 2015 has involved something over one million refugees and migrants. It is daunting to envision much larger flows of people, but that is why the global community should start doing so now.

Which is all the more why the president and his 63 million voters want to build that wall and keep all the migrants out!

63 million voters!