![]() According to some projections, 3.5 billion people globally will live in unbearable heat by 2070.Īddressing this triple crisis requires reorienting corporate governance, finance, policy and energy systems towards a green economic transformation. Global warming will cause drinking water to degrade and enable pollution-linked respiratory diseases to thrive. The climate crisis is also a public-health crisis. Without fundamental change, climate change will worsen such problems. For example, we demand the most from “essential workers” (including nurses, supermarket workers, and delivery drivers) while paying them the least. These shortcomings reflect the distorted values underlying our priorities. These include governments’ diminishing capacity to address public-health crises, the private sector’s limited ability to withstand sustained economic disruption and pervasive social inequality. ![]() But the three crises - and their solutions - are interconnected.ĬOVID-19 is itself a consequence of environmental degradation: one recent study dubbed it “the disease of the Anthropocene”, Moreover, climate change will exacerbate the social and economic problems highlighted by the pandemic. Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently. Under a “climate lockdown”, governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. ![]() Shifting Arctic ice, raging wildfires in western US states and elsewhere and methane leaks in the North Sea are all warning signs that we are approaching a tipping point on climate change, when protecting the future of civilisation will require dramatic interventions. In the near future, the world may need to resort to lockdowns again - this time to tackle a climate emergency. Ocasio-Cortez and Blumenauer had previously cast their 2019 resolution as a necessary start to a long fight for implementing key parts of the Green New Deal climate change proposal.ĬNN’s Ryan Nobles and Gregory Krieg contributed to this report.LONDON - As COVID-19 spread earlier this year, governments introduced lockdowns in order to prevent a public-health emergency from spinning out of control. The Center for Biological Diversity, an organization backing the bill, said in a statement that declaring a climate emergency would allow Biden to be able “to redirect military funds to build clean energy systems, marshal private industry for clean technology manufacturing, generate millions of high-quality jobs and finally put an end to dangerous crude oil exports.” She added, “Our country is in crisis and, to address it, we will have to mobilize our social and economic resources on a massive scale.” We are out of time and excuses,” Ocasio-Cortez said in the statement. “We’ve made a lot of progress since we introduced this resolution two years ago, but now we have to meet the moment. The bill would push the executive branch to upgrade infrastructure, modernize buildings to curb pollution, and protect public lands, among other investments. If passed, the bill would require Biden to provide Congress with a report detailing the executive branch’s actions in combating the climate crisis. “President Biden has done an outstanding job of prioritizing climate in the first days of his administration, but after years of blatant ignorance from Trump and Congressional republicans, an even larger mobilization is needed,” Blumenauer said in a statement unveiling the proposal. Now, the lawmakers have re-energized their efforts under a new administration committed to combating climate change with an ambitious plan to do so. They had introduced a similar resolution in 2019 – but it had little hope of advancing in the Republican-led Senate and under former President Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, would direct Biden to declare a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act of 1976, allowing him to unlock sweeping presidential powers and be able to organize resources to mitigate climate change. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, along with Independent Sen. The National Climate Emergency Act, introduced by Democratic Reps. Three progressive lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday that would require President Joe Biden to declare a national climate emergency, arguing that the US is “out of time and excuses” to deal with the climate crisis.
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