Editorial: The arrival of climate change
If you're like us, when the tornado warnings were going out across the suburbs last week, along with several days of stormy weather, you may have wondered: Is this one more symptom of climate change?
That's impossible to answer with any precision. We have had tornadoes and stormy weeks before. It's hard to pinpoint the cause of any single weather event.
But what is clear is that extreme weather - like the record heat waves, horrific wildfires and unprecedented flooding that have ravaged spots all around the globe this summer - is a hallmark of this undeniable change.
What is becoming painfully clear is that climate change is not some distant threat.
Climate change is here. Now.
And the impact of it is only going to get worse.
It's going to get worse even if we do something about it.
All we're left with now is to minimize how much worse it gets.
If we do nothing or next to nothing, if we continue to kid ourselves that it's just part of the natural ebb and flow of the planet's weather, well, then it will become a catastrophe.
If we all have not been alarmed by the myriad examples of extreme weather so far in 2021, we should be by the report released last week by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Its report on the state of the worldwide environment warns that world leaders must act immediately to reduce human reliance on fossil fuels or risk significant growth of extreme weather events.
But this is not just a matter for world leaders and politicians. It is an existential challenge that calls on all of us to do our parts.
Some responses will be easy. Some will be hard. All must be done.
We must reduce the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and we must make wise choices in how we adapt to the climate change that already has been set in motion.
The U.N. panel said scientists are observing irrefutable climate changes in every region of the planet.
"Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion - such as continued sea level rise - are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years," the panel said.
Left unchecked, these changes will affect virtually everything about human life as well as the lives of other animals who share the planet with us: Our water and food supplies, sea levels, where and how we live, our health, our economies, virtually everything.
"We just barely have the time," U.S. Rep. Sean Casten of Downers Grove said. "Our moment is right now to do what's necessary."
We can pretend no longer.