Editor’s Note: Marshall Brain – futurist, inventor, NCSU professor, author and creator of “How Stuff Works” is a WRAL TechWire contributor. Brain takes a serious and entertaining look at the world of possibilities for Earth and humanity. He is also the author of The Doomsday Book: The Science Behind Humanity’s Greatest Threats. Brain has recently written several posts about the threat of climate change. His exclusive columns for TechWire are published every Friday.
RALEIGH — You may have heard the news this week: The United States Senate passed America’s first major climate change legislation. It is expected to be passed by the House of Representatives and then the President should sign it soon.
Therefore, we could ask three big questions about this legislation:
Odds and Ends
Then there’s more esoteric stuff in the piece, including: On the same subject : The Video Game Treatment – Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta – Podcast on CNN Audio.
As you can see, the Inflation Reduction Act contains this incredible bunch of different programs and allocations to help deal with climate change.
To their credit, one interesting aspect of all these programs is that they are paid for by raising taxes, mostly on businesses and the wealthy. This is not deficit spending – it is paid for.
Is this enough, or is it too little too late?
Is all this climate change funding worth it? Of course it helps. This may interest you : Secretary Blinken’s trip for the Minister of Food Security to host Germany and the G7 Summit with NATO – US State Department.. Reducing US carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 is a win.
But is that enough? No, it’s nowhere near enough. The fact is that the US needs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 100% by 2030. So does the whole world.
Consider everything we’ve already seen in 2022:
All of this is just a taste of what lies ahead in our future. This is the tip of the iceberg.
Now think what will happen when a few more years pass. How bad will things be in 2030 because humanity doesn’t act fast enough or significantly enough?
I’ll make a prediction: by 2030, even if the US cuts carbon emissions by 40%, the world as a whole will still be breaking global carbon emissions records. And so we live on a planet where things are much, much worse than in 2022. Let’s hope, for the sake of humanity and the rest of Earth’s biosphere, that I’m wrong. Let’s hope that the human species can somehow come together in the next few years and get serious about climate change so that we can completely eliminate fossil fuels and their carbon emissions. The US takes a small first step with the Inflation Reduction Act. The world needs to increase this effort 100-fold to actually make a dent in the coming climate disaster.
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