A bold climate change plan deserves spirited support

People sit under the sun near Foster Beach in Edgewater this month. Because of unusually hot weather, Chicago just recorded its longest streak of high-pollution days in more than a decade. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

For too long, our country has allowed politics to defeat common sense when it comes to climate change, not unlike the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic.

Grass-roots protests for racial justice, sweeping the country, show that when Americans are fired up, our country can make serious progress on big structural problems that have been mired in inaction.

Next up: Saving the planet from overheating.

For far too long, our nation has shrugged off the slow-motion disaster of climate change. We have allowed politics to defeat common sense, not unlike the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

So now is the time to rally behind a thoughtful and ambitious new climate change proposal in the U.S. House. We should get behind, as well, a host of excellent climate change recommendations made last week by a task force led by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

“I think it is exciting,” Jack Darin, director of the Sierra Club Illinois, told us on Monday of the House plan. “It is great to see that [climate change] has not fallen off the radar screen in light of everything else that is going on.”

The House’s 500-page plan is not expected to survive in the Senate. Not this Republican Senate. But it provides a sound basis for aggressive grassroots action; and it makes a compelling case that climate change is not an intractable problem — we can beat this thing.

And COVID-19 has shown us the foolishness of waiting to act until disaster is fully upon us.

America has failed as a global leader in the COVID-19 pandemic, with catastrophic results. Why not learn from this and take a strong lead now on climate change?

At the end of June, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis laid out a group of bills to deal with climate change. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., expects the House to approve them.

Among the provisions: All electricity must come from renewable or zero-carbon nuclear sources by 2040, vehicles must be electric, buildings should be much more energy efficient, natural gas leaks in infrastructure should be reduced and mass transit should be significantly expanded.

The plan also calls for the federal government to subsidize the development of renewable energy with a goal of ending of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels by 2050.

“It’s bold,” said Josh Mogerman, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It has a lot of essential things that need to be addressed and addressed quickly.”

The bill fits with what climate experts say are the key paths we must take: renewable energy, energy efficiency and using only electricity to power transportation, homes, commercial buildings and industry. The aim is to limit the increase in global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Many Republicans call the plan a jobs-killer that we don’t need, especially at a time when the economy is groaning beneath the coronavirus pandemic. But the longer we fail to act, the worse the ultimate damage to the economy will be. At minimum, the House climate change plan offers Democrats shovel-ready legislation they can act on should they prevail in the November elections.

The House bills also would create new jobs for people who retrofit polluting buildings and infrastructure, and who build new green projects. It would help workers in fossil fuel industries to transition to green jobs, and steer new jobs to economically challenged communities.

Around the world, we already are seeing extreme weather and ocean acidification, damaging ecosystems and biodiversity. And people are catching on to the immense threat. A majority of Americans now say dealing with climate change should be a “top priority,” compared with just 38 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center.

Worrisome signs are all around, in fact, that climate change might fry our planet more quickly than we think.

Days of 100-plus-degree heat in Siberia are fueling wildfires and melting the permafrost, releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and accelerating warming. The bellwether “Doomsday glacier” in the Antarctic is losing ice at an ever-more-quickly rate.

Because of unusually hot weather, Chicago just recorded its longest streak of high-pollution days in more than a decade. Last month tied for the sixth warmest June on record. Increasingly heavy storms made May the wettest on record, for the third year in a row.

In a study published earlier this month, scientists said that even if we cut carbon emissions now, it could be decades before we see the benefits. That’s an argument for getting started.

The House Democrats have put forth a good plan.

They need your help to make it happen.

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