Climate change
As TV viewers, we observe the notable increase in extreme global weather events because of a warming climate, as reported in the federally funded study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, but they seem to be happening in faraway places.
Gov. David Ige, however, signed Act 32 this year, making climate change a priority issue because of immediate and long-term threats to Hawaii’s economy, sustainability, security, way of life for all of us, and to commit Hawaii to the Paris climate agreement.
Commitments under the Paris agreement are only one-third of the level needed to keep global temperatures from increasing more than the 2 degrees Celsius threshold, and the U.S. government is slashing regulations on climate and the environment. This is where citizen action can fill the vacuum.
Currently, there are several Hawaii chapters of national and international organizations working locally to alert residents about solutions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. Citizens’ Climate Lobby is one of them, proposing a solution referred to as “carbon fee ÷nd.” To move this plan forward, CCL helped organize the House Climate Solutions Caucus in 2016, and today there are 60 congressional members, evenly divided, with 30 Democrats and 30 Republicans, working together on climate solutions legislation to prevent a devastating climate future.
For more about CCL, visit www.citizensclimatelobby.org.
The Hawaii Island chapter can be found at https://citizensclimatelobby.org/chapters/hi_hawaii_island.
Even though Hawaii hasn’t experienced the worst effects from extreme weather, sea level rise, beachfront erosion, salt water incursion of fresh water aquifers, extreme drought and flooding, loss of coral fish nurseries, deadly toxic polluted air, crop failures and massive wildfires, these events already are impacting humans now.
Now is the time to learn from these websites what every one of us can do to avert this global disaster.
Merle Hayward
Hilo