The president of the United States received a warning from scientists due to the enormous amount of toxic emissions into the atmosphere. “Measures must be taken because it is harmful from the point of view of human beings,” they urged.
President? It was Lyndon Johnson and it was 1965.
"Goodbye New York, goodbye Washington," wrote Daniel Patrick Moynihan, adviser to President Richard Nixon. Moynihan then predicted that there was a danger of extinction due to the increase in carbon dioxide in the air. He warned that burning oil, gas and coal would lead to dangerous global warming, melting glaciers and rising sea levels.
He wrote all this in 1969 and it seems that he had a crystal ball in which he could see what is happening now, with the melting of the Arctic at a faster rate than previously thought, with millions displaced by drought or floods or simply because the sea has flooded their homes. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and damaging.
Five decades after those admonitions, Joe Biden, the current president of the United States, is preparing to sign the nation's first major climate law this week, endowed with 370,000 million dollars. This means starting the movement to get the country off fossil fuels and into this decade-long investment in renewables like solar or wind, clean hydrogen or energy storage.
In this way, decades of inaction and rancor in American politics are overcome.
In truth, this law, which incorporates an improvement in health care and a revision of the tax code with the introduction of taxes of at least 15% for corporations, maintains the division. Not a single conservative voted in favor, neither in the Senate nor in the House, despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans, including Republicans, believe that climate change is behind extreme weather, according to a Pew poll. Research Center.
According to experts, this new law will reduce emissions to the lowest level since the Johnson Administration, around 40% compared to 2005 in greenhouse effect pollution. They estimate that one billion tons of pollution per year will be eliminated by the end of 2030. It is almost enough to meet Biden's commitment to reduce emissions by 50% by the end of this decade.
The measure was supported by environmental groups, but they stressed that this can only be the beginning and not the conclusion. This claim was especially felt by younger activists, who are much more exposed to the consequences than the septuagenarian legislators who have drafted this historic law. “Your work is not done yet,” some fifty young leaders wrote in a letter to Congress.
“We have finally crossed an important threshold. I never imagined it would take so long," said former Vice President Al Gore, a promoter of awareness in this emergency.
