It’s time to do something about climate change — before we hit the point of no return

It seems we are destroying our world at a rate that is astounding, and that we are approaching that point of “no return” when extinction appears imminent for much of life.

According to last year’s Paris talks, we are on a trajectory to raise Earth’s temperature by 3.5 degrees Celsius. Our great cities will be underwater; our fields will not produce the food we need; our bodies will not be able to venture outside in many places. Already, the World Health Organization estimates, increased heat and humidity have cut the labor a human can perform by 10 percent, and it’s rising.

The Obama administration has done more than its predecessors, but far less than is required to control what is happening to our atmosphere. They substituted fracked natural gas for coal, which leaks methane gas into the atmosphere, which has increased our green house gas emissions. President-elect Donald Trump, of course, has famously insisted that global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese and has promised to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency.

There is certainly a great need to bring reason and urgency back into this very grim picture.

This story was originally published December 24, 2016 at 7:21 PM with the headline "It’s time to do something about climate change — before we hit the point of no return."