Another day, another report about a huge international crisis about which neither of our political parties is prepared to do squat:

More than 100

million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2

percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 if the world fails to

tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on

Wednesday.

We're actually having a debate here in North America about whether it's a smart move to move the world's dirtiest carbon-based dreck down a pipeline, through the most delicate and endangered source of fresh water on the continent, to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico so it can be converted into oil for the rest of the world to burn. Support for that project is now a litmus test for Republican politicians. But anyway, more from the report:

It calculated that five million deaths occur each

year from air pollution, hunger and disease as a result of climate

change and carbon-intensive economies, and that toll would likely rise

to six million a year by 2030 if current patterns of fossil fuel use

continue.

Elect a Republican Senate and the chairman of the environmental committee is going to be a guy who doesn't think this is happening at all. But we continue:

More than 90 percent of those deaths will

occur in developing countries, said the report that calculated the human

and economic impact of climate change on 184 countries in 2010 and

2030. It was commissioned by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a partnership

of 20 developing countries threatened by climate change. "A

combined climate-carbon crisis is estimated to claim 100 million lives

between now and the end of the next decade," the report said. It

said the effects of climate change had lowered global output by 1.6

percent of world GDP, or by about $1.2 trillion a year, and losses could

double to 3.2 percent of global GDP by 2030 if global temperatures are

allowed to rise, surpassing 10 percent before 2100.

And Democratic politicians, up to and including the President of the United States, seem content to be the Party of The Less Crazy, without taking any action that might cost them votes, including demonstrating to the world that their political opposition is out of its mind on the issue. Which is why any Democrat should have stood up and cheered when Elizabeth Warren pointed out in their debate that a vote for Scott Brown is a vote for empowering Jim Inhofe. That's simply how the world works. If Brown would refuse to vote for Inhofe based on the latter's absurd beliefs about climate change, he should say so. We all have skin in this game.

What do these people think is going to happen if we let half the "developing world" burn and the other half starve? Do they believe that the people in the "developing world" are simply going to peaceably burn and starve without raising a ruckus with the political and social order? Do they believe we are immune from the ruckus here? This is a recipe for worldwide disorder, a planetary food riot. Sometime in the future, I swear, what historians there are who haven't burned or starved are going to be amazed at how it all happened.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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