Climate chaos: planetary dangers and humanitarian emergency

Antonio Guterres is right, enough with treating civilization and Mother Earth like a toilet. The fossil fuel companies are pushing us to a hellish future. We must ban them – before 2030. We certainly don't want a global temperature of 2.7 degrees Celsius. Take science seriously. Act now to defend the Earth and civilization. Take seriously Kausea Natano's proposal to phase out fossil fuels with a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

America is warming faster than other countries

In the US, however, climate policy science is on-and-off, depending on the administration. President Joe Biden was not a model of putting human and environmental health above fossil fuels. But he was responsible enough to admit the country was suffering from the burning of fossil fuels. He encouraged the experts working in the federal government to study global warming. They did. On November 14, 2023, they published The Fifth National Climate Assessment. This comprehensive study painted a real, though dangerous, picture of America awash in fossil fuels and rising temperatures, especially over the last 50 years.

We should have known that war has always been an explosive charge to climate chaos. It accelerates planetary warming by boosting the production and burning of fossil fuels. Some US politicians probably understand this lethal connection between war and higher global temperatures. But many politicians, especially Republicans, ignore climate change altogether, exactly like President Trump. They take advantage of the wars in Ukraine, the October 7, 2023, war in Israel, and the war between the US and Israel against Iran, which started in February 2026. These wars increase the military budget and the immense profits of the munitions companies that fund their reelection.

Add to the military-generated warming of America, the vast industrialized agriculture of the country, its thousands of unregulated animal farms, factories of greenhouse gases, disease and annual slaughter of about 10 billion animals, the equally vast numbers of petroleum-powered cars, trucks, airplanes, ships, yachts, and the fossil fuel-powered production of electricity, cement, fertilizers, and pesticides, you get an idea of the colossal fossil fuel energy used daily in America. To add insult to injury, cities light up their skyscrapers, hotels, and theaters at night. This light pollution is an additional, thoroughly unnecessary blow to the planet.

We know that the land warms faster than the ocean, that higher latitudes have been warming faster than lower latitudes and that "the Arctic has warmed fastest of all." In addition, some eight disasters, each causing on average about a billion dollars in damage, have struck the US every year in the past forty years. However, climate change has been multiplying these calamities to 18 per year over the past five years. As I said, the Biden White House published the Fifth National Climate Assessment (November 14, 2023). The Report said that the more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the worse it is for us now and for our children. And we experience the worst effects by far (in thousands of years).

"The global warming observed over the industrial era," says the Report, "is unequivocally caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities-primarily burning fossil fuels. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2)-the primary greenhouse gas produced by human activities-and other greenhouse gases continue to rise due to ongoing global emissions. Stopping global warming would require both reducing CO2 emissions to net zero and rapid, deep reductions in other greenhouse gases. Net-zero CO2 emissions means that CO2 emissions decline to zero."

But the most startling and devastating conclusion of the Fifth Climate Report is that the US is beyond the charts. Its obsession with the profits of petroleum companies, and petroleum-powered machines (cars, trucks, buses, ships, yachts, airplanes, industrialized agriculture and, especially, animal farms, leaf blowers, military fleets of airplanes and navies) has made the country extremely vulnerable to private greed, and to the forces of nature. Ceaseless dumping of unfathomable amounts of planet-warming gases into the atmosphere is threatening the country with thermal death. "The things Americans value most are at risk," says the Fifth National Climate Assessment. "More intense extreme events and long-term climate changes make it harder to maintain safe homes and healthy families, reliable public services, a sustainable economy, thriving ecosystems and strong communities… The United States has warmed 68 percent faster than Earth as a whole over the past 50 years."

Epilogue

Humanitarianism, compassion for the plight or misfortunes striking Americans from climate chaos, may well be the greatest political and ethical virtue and power to slow down and stop our suicidal burning of fossil fuels. Humanity's connection to oil, gas, and coal has become addictive and very difficult to oppose with scientific evidence. An example of this is President Trump and the Republican politicians in Congress and their followers all over the country.

The evidence of the destructive effects of climate chaos is everywhere. The country is warming faster than any other place on Earth. America and the world have been suffering almost daily, weekly and monthly. But those hooked on the profits of oil and gas are governing America and the planet, or are agents of the fossil fuel industry. Not merely America but the entire planet is warming faster than the last ice age: "The rate of warming from the end of the last ice age was about 7 degrees Celsius over a period of 18,000 years, or 0.04 degrees Celsius per century. In contrast, the rate of warming over the past 100 years was roughly 1.3 degrees Celsius per century. That's about 32 times faster than the rate coming out of the Last Glacial Maximum."

Facts, however, don't seem to matter. Oil and gas supporters ignore evidence and support what's profitable to them. Like religious beliefs, superstition rejecting the climate chaos-fossil fuels connection has become metaphysics, blocking reason and science.