It’s Time for the US to Declare a National Climate Emergency

The US has no comprehensive climate action plan with clear, enforceable targets, timelines, and road maps for climate protection and restabilization.

Last year was the hottest on Earth in 125,000 years and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was the highest in 4 million years and is still climbing at an ever-increasing rate.

Climate change is putting an increasingly heavy burden on our social safety net, which could ultimately cause social order to begin to break down, generating chaos.

There is a historical precedent for just such a comprehensive mobilization of government and citizenry in dire circumstances.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ’s New Deal in the 1930s and the World War II years provide examples of the response needed today to reverse climate change.

Rising seas pose serious threats to major American cities, while millions of acres of the Midwest have been flooded by climate-related extreme weather events.

Katrina vanden Heuvel : A Republican stranglehold on Congress and/or the White House would stymie a climate plan.

She says a strong popular constituency must be built nationwide to exert pressure on Congress to create a plan.

The fossil-fuel industry has blocked meaningful climate legislation in both Democratic and Republican congresses, she says.