Black Friday climate statement renews warnings for U.S.

On Black Friday, the federal government released the fourth National Climate Assessment, which warned that the continued warming of the planet would cause potentially severe damage to the American economy and ultimately present a hazard to the health of the America public.

Mandated by Congress, the report was assembled by 13 federal agencies and departments and covers more than a 1,000 pages of analysis and data.

The president quickly brushed aside the report and maintained his skepticism of climate science and multilateral efforts to restrain global warming. When he announced that the United States would leave the Paris Climate Accord in June 2017, he said that the accord was a "bad deal" for America that would cause a loss of jobs.

The scientists who put the report together beg to differ. They forecast that more severe storms, droughts, coastal flooding and other climate effects could reduce the size of the American economy by 10 percent.

Many saw the president's decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord, something that cannot happen before November 2020, as pointedly reversing another of the Obama Administration's accomplishments, but this views Paris narrowly as an isolated event. It is not.

Paris, also known as COP21 (Conference of Parties), was an annual meeting to assess progress toward goals set forth at the 1992 Rio Earth Day Summit known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. There are 197 parties, including the United States, who are signatories to that framework, and withdrawing from Paris will not change that.

The fundamental goal of the Framework is to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions "at levels that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." Paris was a milestone because the parties agreed to determine, plan and regularly report on their efforts. However, none of the targets are binding and there is no mechanism to force a country to set and meet targets.

In many ways, the president's decision to withdraw, was more symbol than substance, but the dismantling of environmental regulations and policies that favor carbon-based energy will most certainly make it more difficult to meet targets set forth by the Obama Administration in the wake of Paris. That goal seeks to reduce emissions from 2005 levels by 26 to 28 percent by 2025.

Interestingly, the U.S. is within striking distance of meeting those targets despite the stance by the current administration. Part of the reason is pure economics. The shale boom means we are burning more natural gas and less coal. Cars are more efficient. Overall, renewable sources of energy - hydro, solar, wind, biomass, etc. - have nearly doubled as a percentage of all U.S. energy consumption this century.

An organization known as "We Are Still In" has obtained pledges from 10 states, 2,142 businesses, 280 cities and counties (including Cook County), and 346 universities to continue to strive to meet the goals set forth in Paris. The businesses certainly understand that energy efficiency lowers their costs and that renewable energy is creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

On December 3, world leaders and thousands more will gather in Katowice, Poland for COP24 to try to push forward global efforts to mitigate the impact of human activity on the climate. Like COP23 in Bonn last year, the Trump Administration is expected to send a relatively low level delegation. However, hundreds of other American leaders will most certainly be there.

Even climate change skeptics should be able to admit that when communities are devastated by hurricanes made more powerful by warming seas; when thousands of homes and businesses are laid waste by wildfires fed by severe drought conditions; when rising seas cause increased coastal flooding, as is happening in Miami right now, that all of these are also a "bad deal" for Americans.

Fortunately, even as the president and the Congress fail to act, many other American leaders have grasped that it is in America's economic interests to try to reduce the impact of climate change.

Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86.