Bob Sheak, April 19, 2026
Arlene Sheak edits
Introduction
In this article I offer an update of evidence on the accelerating climate crisis. We may be at a point where the crisis will continue to advance, as it has, and cause ever-more destruction and death across the planet. It is an existential threat to humanity.
It would take far more effort by nations, especially those in the West and China, to end dependence on fossil fuels and the accompanying torrent of carbon emissions they produce. This appears to be increasingly unlikely, but the only recourse.
Every Key Climate Indicator is Flashing Red
Julia Conley reports on March 23, 2026, on the absence of effective action in the U.S. and across the globe to slow down the climate crisis (https://www.commondreams.org/news/un-report-climate). She writes that “every key climate indicator is flashing red,” referencing the annual State of Global Climate report by the United Nation’s meteorological agency, The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO). Here’s some of what she reports.
“The annual State of the Global Climate report by the United Nations’ top meteorological agency was released Monday, marking the first time the authors of the report have included the Earth’s energy imbalance as a key indicator of the climate emergency.
“The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) inclusion of the imbalance only provides more evidence of what scientists have been warning for decades: The continued extraction of fossil fuels is causing heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide and methane to build up in the atmosphere and is causing planetary heating, which is leading to extreme weather including wildfires, drought, and severe hurricanes and cyclones.
“The State of the Global Climate report explains that in a stable climate, incoming solar energy is roughly equal to the amount of energy leaving the Earth.
“But with greenhouse gases at their highest level in the atmosphere in at least 800,000 years, that equilibrium has been thrown off, and the energy imbalance—which has increased steadily over the past two decades—is at its highest since the observational record began in 1960.”
“Last year was the second- or third-hottest year on record, depending on the data set, owing to La Niña conditions that temporarily cooled the planet. Earth was about 1.43°C warmer than the pre-industrial average, and 2024—when hotter El Niño conditions were in effect—remains the hottest year with global temperatures averaging 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels.”
“Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump—whose country is the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases—has taken steps to weaken the world’s ability to respond to the climate emergency, withdrawing from dozens of climate- and energy-related international treaties and slashing climate research and emergency response spending.
“Trump has also pushed for more fossil fuel emissions—investing in the expensive, pollution-causing coal industry; demanding that the Pentagon obtain energy from coal plants; and mandating oil and gas lease sales.”
World Meteorological Organization: Last 10 Years Have Been the Hottest on Record
Eloise Goldsmith reports on this for Common Dreams, March 19, 2025
A WMO [World Meteorological Organization] report also found that 2024 was the warmest year in a 175-year observational period.
“A report released by the World Meteorological Organization on Tuesday found that not only was 2024 the warmest year in a 175-year observational period, reaching a global surface temperature of roughly 1.55°C above the preindustrial average for the first time, but each of the past 10 years were also individually the 10 warmest on record.
“‘That’s never happened before,’ Chris Hewitt, the director of the WMO’s climate services division, of the clustering of the 10 warmest years all in the most recent decade, told The New York Times.”
World on track for catastrophic 3 degrees Celsius warming, UN warns
Zia Weise and Lucia Mackenzie also consider evidence that documents the rise in global warming, Oct 24, 2024 (https://politico.eu/article/united-nations-emissions-gap-global-warming-data-climate-change-report).
“Current plans and policies will lead to 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius of global warming this century, with zero chance of limiting the temperature increase to the totemic 1.5C target agreed in Paris in 2015, according to a new report out Thursday.
“In fact, existing measures are falling so far short of what’s needed that the world even risks blowing past 2C, the Paris accord’s upper limit, the U.N. warned.
“The severity and frequency of dangerous heat waves, destructive storms and other disasters rise with every fraction of warming. At 3C, scientists say, the world could pass several points of no return that would dramatically alter the planet’s climate and increase sea levels, such as due to the collapse of polar ice caps.”
“In general, the G20 — which comprises industrialized countries such as the EU and U.S. as well as Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia — were responsible for 77 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2023.
In stark contrast, all 55 African Union countries accounted for just 6 percent.”
2025 Ranked as One of World’s Hottest Years Due to Human-Made Climate Crisis
Chris Walker , Truthout, Dec 30, 2025 (https://truthout.org/articles/2025-ranked-as-one-of-worlds-hottest-years-due-to-human-made-climate-crisis). Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the handle @thatchriswalker.
“Climate change made 2025 heat waves 10 times more likely, a new report finds.
“A new analysis of the world’s climate in 2025 finds that this year was one of the three hottest ever recorded, demonstrating that the threat posed by the human-made climate crisis is not going away anytime soon.
“The analysis by World Weather Attribution (WWA), an organization that examines the likelihood that the climate crisis played a role in severe weather events, also shows that, over the past three years, the world has exceeded the 1.5 degrees Celsius global increase limit outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
“Bottom of Form
Overall, the WWA report published on Tuesday documented 157 extreme weather events throughout 2025, defined as an event that either causes more than 100 deaths in a given area, detrimentally affects more than half that area’s population, or results in a state of emergency being declared.”
Friederike Otto, a co-founder of WWA and a professor of climate science at the Imperial College of London, said the climate crisis and humanity’s role in exacerbating it could not be debated.
“‘Each year, the risks of climate change become less hypothetical and more brutal reality,’ Otto said.
“‘The heat waves we have observed this year are quite common events in our climate today, but they would have been almost impossible to occur without human-induced climate change,’ Otto explained.
“WWA called for rapid and deep reductions in the use of fossil fuels, stating that extreme weather will continue to intensify without immediate changes.
“Globally, the world isn’t doing enough to slow, let alone reverse, the trend. China, for example, is investing in renewable energy sources, but also still heavily invests in coal. And in the U.S., the Trump administration is ending once-planned renewable energy projects in favor of fossil fuels.”
“‘A lot of policymakers [are] very clearly making policies for the interest of the fossil fuel industry rather than for the populations of their countries,’ Otto opined.”
New Climate Reports Show ‘Unprecedented Run of Global Heat’
Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, Jan 13, 2026 (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13012026/multiple-reports-show-2025-extreme-global-heat)….
“Data from multiple international agencies shows the reality of a rapidly warming world.
“Several annual international climate reports released Tuesday indicate that relentless human-caused warming continued in 2025, especially in the oceans and at the poles.
“For the third year in a row, Earth’s average temperature ran close to 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than the climate that sustained human civilizations as the 20th century began, before fossil-fuel pollution started damaging the atmosphere.
“Avoiding more than that level of warming is also the key long-term temperature goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Research shows that warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the baseline will spell the end of nearly all global glaciers and coral reefs and mark a dangerous red zone for damage and destruction of ecosystems, food supplies, human health and infrastructure.”
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service report released Tuesday ranked 2025 as the third-warmest year on record, just a hair cooler than 2023 and within striking distance of 2024, the hottest year on record. Together, the past three years have averaged more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, the first time any three-year stretch has crossed that threshold.
“‘Emissions simply haven’t come down as fast as people believed they would,’ Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said when asked about crossing the Paris Agreement limit so soon.
“‘And the extreme temperatures of 2023, 2024 and 2025 will be seen as cooler than average in just a few years, Burgess said, warning that continued fossil-fuel emissions are rapidly resetting what the world considers normal.”
“‘By far and away, the high global temperatures of the last three years have been due to the record amount of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere,’ Burgess said. Other factors can have regional impacts, such as reductions in industrial and shipping pollution that reflect heat away from Earth, especially over oceans, and can also nudge the global average by about 0.1 degrees Celsius.
“Major climate monitoring centers around the world are releasing their annual assessments in coordinated fashion Tuesday and into early Wednesday, including the World Meteorological Organization, NASA and the United Kingdom’s Met Office.
“The reports’ exact global temperature figures differ by a few tenths of a degree, reflecting slightly different datasets and analytical methods, but they all point in the same direction: Global warming is accelerating, driven overwhelmingly by human emissions.”
“‘We’re all very consistent in the near term, because our planet is better observed than it has ever been,’ said Burgess.”
“A separate analysis released last week by Climate Central quantifies the damage caused by climate extremes in the United States. The group found that the country experienced 23 weather and climate disasters in 2025, from destructive storms and floods to heat-driven wildfires, that each caused at least $1 billion in damage, totaling about $115 billion in losses.”
“Climate Central is a nonprofit organization of scientists and journalists that researches and communicates climate science and impacts. After the Trump administration cut NOAA’s billion-dollar disaster database, the group revived it to keep long-term loss tracking publicly available using the same scientific methods.
“In addition to the disaster database, the Trump administration last year reduced weather balloon launches, said it would shut down the National Center for Atmospheric Research and cut thousands of positions at science-focused agencies. Experts warn that weakening or sidelining science leaves communities more vulnerable.
“Several groups of former federal scientists are working outside the government to ensure critical information continues to flow. The American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union are teaming up to publish a series of peer-reviewed papers to help fill the gap left by the discontinuation of the National Climate Assessment. Other former federal officials are building Climate.us as a replacement for a federal website that the Trump administration shut down last year.”
“For the contiguous U.S., 2025 was the fourth-warmest year on record, according to the annual State of the Climate report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also published Tuesday. The NOAA report highlights that heat was concentrated in the West, with Nevada and Utah recording their warmest years in the 134-year record. As part of that report, the U.S. Climate Extremes Index ranked 2025 as the 12th-highest on record, particularly for maximum and minimum temperatures and for dry conditions.”
Arctic sea ice hits lowest winter level as unprecedented heat smashes records all over Earth
NBC News March 27, 2026 (https://www.nbcnews.com/science/climate-change-artic-sea-hits-lowest-winter-level-unprecedented-heat-records-rcna265501).
“The sea ice is crucial to Earth’s climate because without it reflecting sunlight, more heat energy goes into the oceans. Ice of all kinds around the poles acts as Earth’s refrigerator.
“Vital Arctic sea ice shrank to tie its lowest measured level for the winter, the season when ice grows, as a warming Earth shattered records across the continents.”
“The shrinking Arctic sea ice was announced Thursday as temperatures broke March heat records across the United States, all over Mexico, in Australia, across Northern Africa and through parts of Northern Europe. Climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera, who tracks extreme temperatures, called the extreme March temperatures ‘by far the most extreme heat event in world climatic history’ and said on social media that the next few days would be ‘much worse.’
“Sixteen states broke March temperature records in the past week or so, said weather historian Christ Burt. Twenty-seven locations had temperatures in the past week high enough to tie or surpass the hottest April day on record, including St. Louis, meteorologists said. Mexico has had thousands of records shattered, some of them warmer than the hottest May temperatures, but that’s nothing compared with what’s happening in Asia, where “dozens of thousands of monthly records” were smashed by 30 to 35 degrees (17 to 19 degrees Celsius) margins, Herrera said.
Steady decline of sea ice
“This year’s sea ice area was about 525,000 square miles (1.36 million square kilometers) lower than the 1981 to 2010 winter average peak. That’s about twice the size of Texas.
Americans Are Concerned About Climate Change—but They Should Be Afraid
Mark Hertsgaard makes this point in The Nation, July 17 2025
(https://thenation.com/article/environment/covering-climate-now-americans-afraid).
Mark Hertsgaard is the environment correspondent of The Nation and the executive director of the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now. His new book is Big Red’s Mercy: The Shooting of Deborah Cotton and A Story of Race in America.
Americans still don’t comprehend how imminent, dangerous, and far-reaching the threat is—and journalists are partly to blame.
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“Anthony Leiserowitz, the executive director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said Yale’s latest survey found that only 29 percent of Americans are ‘very worried’ about climate change—a remarkably low number, considering that climate change is already killing people and devastating communities around the world and threatens much worse if left unchecked.
“‘I constantly make the point that only 29 percent are very worried, when it should be 100 percent,’ Leiserowitz told Covering Climate Now. ‘This reflects [climate change’s] lack of salience for most Americans. There are many who are not deniers, but do not adequately understand the risks, that the impacts are here and now, and the urgency of action.’”
“In the United States, the percentage of people supporting stronger climate action is 74 percent. Why, then, are significantly smaller percentages ‘greatly worried’ about climate change?
“‘There’s a big difference between general support for stronger climate action and prioritizing climate action,’ Leiserowitz said. He invoked a concept from political science, the issue public, defined as ‘a relatively small proportion of the general public that is both passionate about an issue and directly engaged in taking political and personal action.’ He added, ‘While it’s important to have a large majority of the public supporting action (e.g., 89 percent), most issues also need an organized, powerful ‘issue public’ that is loudly demanding policy change and implementing personal change.’”
“The fact that less than half of the public is ‘greatly worried’ about climate change shows that most Americans still don’t comprehend how imminent, dangerous, and far-reaching the threat is. There is a ‘critical need for better climate communications,’ Leiserowitz said, ‘especially quality media reporting.’”
Trump to World: Green Energy Is a Scam and Climate Science Is From ‘Stupid People’
Somini Sengupta and Lisa Friedman quote Trump in this, New York Times, Sept 23, 2025, article (https://nytimes.com/2025/09/23/climate/trump-climate-energy-united-nations-unga.html).
“President Trump went on a rant against climate change at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, calling it the ‘greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world’ and saying that the scientific consensus on global warming was created by ‘stupid people.’ He also berated countries, including close allies of the United States, for adopting renewable energy.
“It added up to an extraordinary diatribe that ignored the human suffering exacted by the heat waves, wildfires and deadly floods that are aggravated by the burning of fossil fuels and, at the same time, stood at odds with the rapid expansion of renewable energy all over the world.”
“‘Trump continues to embarrass the U.S. on the global stage and undermine the interests of Americans at home,’ Gina McCarthy, who served as the United States climate policy director in the Biden administration, said in a statement. ‘He’s rejecting our government’s responsibility to protect Americans from the increasingly intense and frequent disasters linked to climate change that unleash havoc on our country.’”
“On his first day in office, Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, a voluntary pact among nearly 200 nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is the only country to have done so. His administration also has thwarted renewable energy projects, stripped federal incentives for wind and solar power and removed climate-science data from government websites. It has also commissioned a report downplaying the consequences of climate change.”
“The United States is already the world’s leading exporter of natural gas and the biggest producer of oil, and the Trump administration is encouraging new development. Mr. Trump has also signed executive orders to expand the burning and mining of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.”
“He referred to global warming as ‘the greatest con job ever perpetrated’ and upbraided world leaders for sticking to an international agreement to limit global temperature rise and transition away from fossil fuels. The moment was all the more remarkable because the United States is responsible for the largest share of global emissions since the Industrial Revolution.”
“Jennifer Morgan, who has served as Germany’s climate change envoy, said European countries saw clean energy as a way to ensure their energy security and to expand their economies. To build a strong Europe, she said, it is necessary to ‘tackle climate change to avoid people having to leave their homes.’”
Trump orders USDA to take down websites referencing climate crisis
Gabrielle Canon, The Guardian, Jan 31, 2025 (https://theguardian.com/2025/jan/31/trump-orders-usda-websites-climate-crisis).
“On Thursday, the Trump administration ordered the US agriculture department to take down its websites documenting or referencing the climate crisis.
“By Friday, the leading pages on the United States Forest Service website for key resources, research and adaptation tools – including those that provide vital context and vulnerability assessments for wildfires – had gone dark, leaving behind an error message or just a single line: “You are not authorized to access this page.”
“The government website was one of many that were affected on Friday by new directives from the Trump administration on what information federal agencies can publish.”
The changes at the Forest Service website followed a directive issued by the United States Department of Agriculture’s office of communications. In the memo, which was reviewed by the Guardian, officials instructed website managers across the agency to ‘identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change.”
Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change
Lisa Friedman considers this issue in the New York Times
(https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/climate/trump-epa-greenhouse-gases-climate-change.html).
“The Environmental Protection Agency rejected the bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten human life and wellbeing. It means the agency can no longer regulate them.
“President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.
“The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather.”
“Led by a president who refers to climate change as a ‘hoax,’ the administration is essentially saying that the vast majority of scientists around the world are wrong and that a hotter planet is not the menace that decades of research show it to be.”
Trump to World: Green Energy Is a Scam and Climate Science Is From ‘Stupid People’
Somini Sengupta and Lisa Friedman, New York Times, Sept 23, 2025
In a remarkable United Nations address, the president lashed out at wind turbines, environmentalists and allies around the world while dismissing the dangers of climate change.
“President Trump went on a rant against climate change at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, calling it the ‘greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world’ and saying that the scientific consensus on global warming was created by ‘stupid people.’ He also berated countries, including close allies of the United States, for adopting renewable energy.
“It added up to an extraordinary diatribe that ignored the human suffering exacted by the heat waves, wildfires and deadly floods that are aggravated by the burning of fossil fuels and, at the same time, stood at odds with the rapid expansion of renewable energy all over the world.”
“On his first day in office, Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, a voluntary pact among nearly 200 nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is the only country to have done so. His administration also has thwarted renewable energy projects, stripped federal incentives for wind and solar power and removed climate-science data from government websites. It has also commissioned a report downplaying the consequences of climate change.”
Against Humanity’: Leaders Denounce Fossil Fuel-Loving Trump as He Skips Out on Global Climate Summit
Stephen Prager writes this in a article for Common Dreams, Nov 7, 2025
(https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-skips-cop30).
“Every fraction of a degree means more hunger, displacement, and loss—especially for those least responsible,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres on Thursday. “This is moral failure—and deadly negligence.”
“As world leaders gathered in Brazil for this year’s global summit on the accelerating climate crisis this week, many took note of the absence of US
President Donald Trump.
“”This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) summit comes on the tenth anniversary of the Paris Climate agreement, in which nations committed to adopting policies intended to keep global temperature increases below the threshold of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, considered a tipping point at which many of the worst ravages of climate change will become irreversible.
“Ten years later, progress has fallen far short of the mark, with leaders scrambling to keep the deal’s goals intact—an aim that is likely untenable without the cooperation of the US, the globe’s largest historical emitter of carbon.
“America’s president has not only once again pulled the US out of the Paris agreement, but also sought to turn climate denial into public policy and spent his term in office thus far grinding American investment in renewable energy to a halt—actions viewed as extraordinary abdications of responsibility at a time when the globe is ever more rapidly approaching the point of no return for warming.
“Every fraction of a degree means more hunger, displacement, and loss—especially for those least responsible,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday. “This is moral failure—and deadly negligence.”
“Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has emerged as one of the world’s leading climate defenders from the heart of the Amazon rainforest, began the conference by delivering an indirect but unmistakable shot at Trump.
“He denounced the “extremist forces that fabricate fake news and are condemning future generations to life on a planet altered forever by global warming.”
“Other Latin American leaders were more direct. Colombian President Gustavo Petro, whom Trump recently hit with sanctions and threatened with military action, denounced the US president as ‘against humanity,’ as evidenced by ‘his absence’ at the conference.”
“‘The president of the United States at the latest United Nations General Assembly said the climate crisis does not exist,’ added Chilean President Gabriel Boric. ‘That is a lie.’”
“In Trump’s stead, over 100 other state and local figures from US politics have traveled to Brazil to take part in the conference: Among them are California Gov. Gavin Newsom, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers.”
“Even without Trump present, COP30 is crawling with fossil fuel lobbyists seeking to stymie progress. A report released Friday from the climate advocacy group Kick Big Polluters Out found that over 5,350 fossil fuel lobbyists have attended UN climate negotiations over the past four years. The corporations they represent are responsible for more than 60% of global emissions.”
2 Weeks of Iran War Released More Carbon Emissions Than 84 Countries Do Yearly
Sharon Zhang reports on this fact for Truthout, Published March 23, 2026
“The first two weeks of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran released a deluge of carbon emissions equivalent to the combined yearly climate warming pollution output of the lowest 84 emitters in the world, a new analysis finds.
“Researchers for progressive think tank Climate and Community Institute found that the first 14 days of the assault released over 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. This is more than the annual emissions of mid-sized economies like Iceland or Kuwait, and roughly the same as dozens of the lowest emitters together.
“‘No matter which of the many reasons Trump has since provided for attacking Iran, the US intervention in Iran is now clearly about oil, plunging the Middle East into another crisis and deepening the social, economic, and environmental costs of war,’ wrote researchers Patrick Bigger, Benjamin Neimark, and Fred Otu-Larbi in a newsletter post about the analysis.
“Bottom of Form
For their analysis, researchers examined reports from the media, international organizations and other independent institutions in order to gather data on factors like munitions quantities, fuel consumption, and infrastructure destruction. They then used that information to determine the volume of emissions based on prior research on emissions from the U.S. invasion of Iraq and from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“The largest cause of emissions in the report is the destruction of homes and buildings, which has resulted in nearly 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, the analysis found. Researchers based this estimate on data from the Iranian Red Crescent Society, which says that 20,000 units were damaged or destroyed in the conflict, including dozens of medical facilities and schools.”
“The emissions from building destruction alone are equal to those of 1.1 million gas-powered cars yearly, the group said.
“The second largest contributor was the attacks on oil facilities by Israeli and Iranian forces in areas across Iran and the Middle East, as well as strikes on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, amounting to 1.9 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
“The remaining emissions came from fuel used by military warships, fighter jets, and support vessels and vehicles; the loss of equipment like the U.S.’s and Iran’s downed aircraft, lost naval vessels, and destroyed missile launchers; and the intensive use of drone and missile attacks.
“‘The carbon costs of the war will continue to rise dramatically as it drags on’ the Climate and Community Institute researchers wrote.
“‘However, the most significant climate impact of the attack on Iran will not be the emissions of the conflict itself, but from its aftermath,’ they went on. ‘As the US continues to press on in its ill-conceived quest for ‘energy dominance,’ fossil fuel production will be expanded in the name of energy security, locking in emissions from extraction infrastructure for decades.”
But the climate emissions from the war, which has no end in sight, will affect the entire world.
The report comes as the U.S. goes through a record heat wave, with eight states setting an all-time high heat record in March. The heat wave would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without changes caused by the climate crisis, research group World Weather Attribution said. More heat may be yet to come, as weather and climate experts predict an extremely strong El Niño this year, which typically means hotter temperatures across the globe.”
Concluding thoughts
This record of a continuing dependence on carbon dioxide emitting fossil fuels, especially in the U.S., where Trump celebrates it, is causing the planet’s temperature to continue rising, with increasingly disastrous consequences.
If Trump, the Republicans, and their corporate allies remain in power, the U.S. contribution to this existential calamity will not be reversed. Unfortunately, it is not a sure eventuality that Democratic administrations would be willing to do enough. Americans are understandable concerned with “affordability” and getting by. The issue of the climate crisis remains an abstraction or non-issue.
Vital issues - challenging pol and econ power 