Wildfires across Europe including Britain as the continent faces the hottest temperatures ever recorded. Record temperatures in China and India. Wildfires across North America in the face of the record temperatures. 

We were warned – over and over and over. We are now seeing the warnings come true, much earlier than predicted. If we don’t do something and do it quickly our children and grand children will be bearing the pain of the years of our ignoring the warnings.

Lyndon Johnson was the first president to warn of global warming some 57 years ago in 1965. Since then we have done only a few actions around the edges while pump geometrically more pollutants into the atmosphere daily:  

It is a key moment in climate change history that few remember: This week marks the 50th anniversary (ed. note: article from 2015) of the first presidential mention of the environmental risk of carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in a February 8, 1965 special message to Congress warned about build-up of the invisible air pollutant that scientists recognize today as the primary contributor to global warming.

“Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places,” said Johnson less than three weeks after his 1965 inauguration. “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

Now as we hear the daily reports of record temperatures across the globe and wildfires nearly everywhere we get some really, really bad news from Scotland:  

An Edinburgh-based research team fears plankton, the tiny organisms that sustain life in our seas, has all but been wiped out after spending two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic.

The landmark research blames chemical pollution from plastics, farm fertilisers and pharmaceuticals in the water. Previously, it was thought the amount of plankton had halved since the 1940s, but the evidence gathered by the Scots suggest 90% has now vanished.

The scientists warn there are only a few years left before the consequences become catastrophically clear when fish, whales and dolphins become extinct, with grave implications for the planet. In the report, the researchers from the Global Oceanic Environmental Survey Foundation (Goes) state: “An environmental catastrophe is unfolding. We believe humanity could adapt to global warming and extreme weather changes. It is our view that humanity will not survive the extinction of most marine plants and animals.”

 << snip >>

“Given that plankton is the life-support system for the planet and humanity cannot survive without it, the result is disturbing. It will be gone in around 25 years. Our results confirmed a 90% reduction in primary productivity in the Atlantic. Effectively, the Atlantic Ocean is now pretty much dead.”

This sounds to my untrained ears about as much of an ominous warning as it could possibly be. 

Now let’s talk this year’s election. There is one party in this country that outright refuses to do anything about the climate. That is the radical right Republican Party. Please, for your children and mine vote for Democrats. Vote as if their lives depend on it. It does!