Black Friday for the Climate

Black Friday is a day of insane consumerism in the United States, which gave the White House reason to believe that it would be the perfect time to bury a report prepared by 13 federal agencies regarding climate change. It stated that the country is experiencing increasingly stronger effects: wildfires, devastating hurricanes, heat waves, loss of permafrost (the Arctic’s frozen surface) and massive bleaching of coral reefs, among other consequences.

All of those impacts have an exploding economic cost, as residents of Texas, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Puerto Rico have seen with terrible storms, and the residents of California, who are literally burning alive. What did Donald Trump say about the results of the study? “I don’t believe it.” With the same petulance he used to wave off the work and efforts of his country’s scientists and the suffering of the victims, this man is in Buenos Aires to block any sign from the group of leading rich and developing nations that recognizes our planetary emergency. With whom are we trying to reach a consensus? Why? Responsibility for this issue also rests with Argentina. After the G-20 summit, the world will continue turning. Clearly, what will come is not pretty.

The G-20 Gets a Wake-Up Call

The United Nations Environment Programme delivered a huge wake-up call to the G-20 countries because they are not on track for meeting the goals for reducing greenhouse gases that were presented before the Convention on Climate Change. Argentina is among them. The report warns that global emissions rose 1.2 percent, instead of dropping, and that by 2030 we must make a five-fold improvement to avoid seeing the average temperature rise more than 1.5 C.