US Policy
If the science we covered in the briefing is correct, then it is imperative that the US should be aware and taking action at all levels, including the Federal Government, State Governments, corporations, and in day-to-day choices made by individuals. This section assesses the actions and policies of the Federal Government, specifically those of the current Trump administration. Whilst we are certainly critical of the current policies of this administration, the assessment is meant to be non-partisan, in that that our goal is to change the policies at the level of the US Federal Government, however that can be accomplished.
This should be a very difficult section for me to write. In the US, we should be well past the point of “is the earth warming?” (yes, it is), “are humans causing it?” (yes we are), and “how bad is this?” (where there’s less certainty - somewhere between “bad” and “wake up at night scared for your kids future bad”). We should now, like the rest of the world, be engaged in the debate as to how ambitious will we be, what level of action must we take now to protect our future, and which are the best approaches.
However, since Jan 2017, the US seems to have reset right back to denying even the truth of “the earth is getting warmer, and we are largely causing it”. The most obvious and visible implication has been the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement, that certainly undermines the global action on the issue. Sure enough, this has then been followed with a number of actions by the administration that are all counter the direction we should be heading based on the science. Indeed, we can see that the reasons are not due to careful and reasonable analysis of the science, implications and evaluation of the options, as we might reasonably expect from elected officials. Instead we see politicians whose assigned duty is to understand the science using the briefings to instead promote their dogma and score political points,