Most of our children, and certainly all of our grandchildren—and even, with luck (?) a lot of us—are going to take this in the teeth. From The New York Times:

The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.

The report “is quite a shock, and quite concerning,” said Bill Hare, an author of previous I.P.C.C. reports and a physicist with Climate Analytics, a nonprofit organization. “We were not aware of this just a few years ago.” The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming. The authors found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040, inundating coastlines and intensifying droughts and poverty.

Previous work had focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by a larger number, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), because that was the threshold scientists previously considered for the most severe effects of climate change. The new report, however, shows that many of those effects will come much sooner, at the 2.7-degree mark.

David McNew Getty Images

Fortunately (?), we can still do something about this, right?

Avoiding the most serious damage requires transforming the world economy within just a few years, said the authors, who estimate that the damage would come at a cost of $54 trillion. But while they conclude that it is technically possible to achieve the rapid changes required to avoid 2.7 degrees of warming, they concede that it may be politically unlikely. For instance, the report says that heavy taxes or prices on carbon dioxide emissions — perhaps as high as $27,000 per ton by 2100 — would be required. But such a move would be almost politically impossible in the United States, the world’s largest economy and second-largest greenhouse gas emitter behind China. Lawmakers around the world, including in China, the European Union and California, have enacted carbon pricing programs.

We learned last week that the current administration*'s attitude toward this existential crisis, in which the president* and most of his political party do not believe anyway, is that we're already too far down the road anyway so, what the hell, let's keep rolling that beautiful coal until the planet is an orbiting cinder. (And, because we like to stay on top of the latest news, our newest associate justice of the Supreme Court hasn't exactly been a rock on the subject, either.)

The midterms? Well, according to most of the smart people I've heard, the state of Tennessee is even-money or better to elect a woman to the U.S. Senate who set herself up as Bill Nye's primary antagonist on the subject, and who also chose to argue the issue with the pope. From the BBC:

Republican Marsha Blackburn, the second-highest ranking member on the House energy committee, says the jury is still out on global warming. Pope Francis is to speak on the subject in an address to Congress on Thursday. He told a White House audience on Wednesday the problem could "no longer be left to a future generation". Speaking earlier this year as part of a forthcoming Radio 4 documentary series "Climate Change - Are we Feeling Lucky?", she asserted that the earth had cooled in the last 13 years by 1F. And she said no evidence would persuade her of man-made warming. She also rejected the theory of evolution. Scientists say her views are "complete nonsense".

Alex Wong Getty Images

"The jury is still out saying man is the cause for global warming, after the earth started to cool 13 years ago," she says. When challenged that the earth's surface temperature had not risen substantially in 13 years - but had definitely not cooled, she said: "I think we've cooled almost 1 degree (F)."

Half the American political system, and the half that happens to control all three branches of government at the moment, and the one that has just rejiggered the Supreme Court possibly until the IPCC's drop-dead date of 2040, is completely unwilling to confront this crisis and has become completely insane on the subject of science that is in conflict with its ideological goals. And then there's this:

In addition, it said, the United States along with Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam are home to 50 million people who will be exposed to the effects of increased coastal flooding by 2040, if 2.7 degrees of warming occur. At 3.6 degrees of warming, the report predicts a “disproportionately rapid evacuation” of people from the tropics. “In some parts of the world, national borders will become irrelevant,” said Aromar Revi, director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements and an author of the report. “You can set up a wall to try to contain 10,000 and 20,000 and one million people, but not 10 million.”

Yeah, we're ready for that, too.

Happy Monday.

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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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