According to a new report, if countries around the globe enacted tougher climate policies, as many as 150 million lives could be saved – lives that are currently in jeopardy as a result of years of inaction on climate change. This includes roughly 330,000 American lives in a handful of major cities (plus thousands more spread across the country.) Lives are at stake, and yet our country is still denying that the problem exists, as Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.
Transcript:
According to a new report, if the United States and other countries around the globe enacted tougher climate change policies, and policies to help reduce pollution, we could save 150 million lives across the globe in the coming years. Those lives would be saved due to basically halting or at least limiting sea level rise across the globe, but more importantly reducing emissions, which would reduce premature deaths due to airborne illnesses, pollution illnesses, and poisoning from factories and other kinds of corporate entities. 150 million people could be saved, and all we have to do is basically enact the climate change protection policies that we’ve been talking about for more than a decade now. 33,000 people in the United States alone would be saved. Actually that’s even true because it’s not just the United States; that’s only in several major cities throughout the United States, 33,000 people. Thousands more in other smaller areas throughout the United States would also not die as a result of tougher climate policies.
But we’re not going to do that. Why? Because in the United States, the fossil fuel industry reigns supreme. They’re the ones who have prevented any meaningful action on climate change in this country. They are 100% responsible for this. They pay off our politicians, politicians who are so brain dead that they want to bring a snowball into Congress and say, “Here’s a snowball, climate change isn’t real. I’m an idiot.” That’s basically what Republican senator, Jim Inhofe did a couple of years ago. He didn’t add the “I’m an idiot” part, but it was implied with his actions there.
150 million people are going to die in the coming years because we have let the fossil fuel industry take over the Republican Party, along with many other industries as well. 150 million people are going to die because we think it’s okay for corporations to spew carbon into the atmosphere unabated. 150 million people are going to die because we’re cool with corporations dumping their toxins into our waterways. 150 million people are going to die because we have a president who has a cabinet that all, seemingly, deny that climate change exists. And, yes, this is a global issue. But when it comes to action on climate change, the United States is falling farther and farther behind the rest of the industrialized world.
Other countries are trying to go 100% renewable. Many areas in other countries have already gone 100% renewable, generating so much power that there selling it to nearby communities; while the United States has decided, “You know what? We’re going to drill for more oil. We’re going to build new coal mines. We’re going to stop the subsidies to renewable energy, even though that’s the fastest growing employment sector in the United States. Because why not? Right?”
150 million people across this planet, including about half a million or more here in the United States, are going to die because we want to make sure that the fossil fuel industry can extract every last drop out of the United States. Their greed is going to kill 150 million people across the planet.
