Unum
2024-08-06 16:14:58 UTC
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2024/08/05/hot-weather-climate-change-vote-election/74617992007/
More Americans are suffering from these heat-related illnesses. Last year,
there were at least 2,300 deaths from excessive heat, more than any recorded
year.
The numbers are yet to roll in for this year nationwide, but many communities
are already counting the dead. Aside from the direct human toll, one study
estimates that extreme heat is responsible for more than 235,000 emergency
room visits and $1 billion in health care costs each summer.
And it is not just the high numbers on the thermometer that are causing
illness from climate change – more wildfires are ravaging the nation, with one
currently consuming 5,000 acres an hour in my home state of California.
Wildfires also lead to worse air quality, which can cause more dangerous
flares of asthma, bronchitis and emphysema.
One side of the political spectrum has been ready to address climate change
and its effects on our health. One side has consistently believed that climate
change is a human-made problem that needs to be addressed. And it is not MAGA
Republicans.
According to the Center for American Progress, at least 123 members of
Congress, all members of the GOP, have made comments denying human-made
climate change, opposing the overwhelming majority of scientists who actually
study the Earth’s climate.
When he was president, Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris
climate treaty and has called global warming a hoax. He even claimed that “the
concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make
U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
Republicans have already been hard at work trying to deregulate pollution
standards and depower the Environmental Protection Agency.
More Americans are suffering from these heat-related illnesses. Last year,
there were at least 2,300 deaths from excessive heat, more than any recorded
year.
The numbers are yet to roll in for this year nationwide, but many communities
are already counting the dead. Aside from the direct human toll, one study
estimates that extreme heat is responsible for more than 235,000 emergency
room visits and $1 billion in health care costs each summer.
And it is not just the high numbers on the thermometer that are causing
illness from climate change – more wildfires are ravaging the nation, with one
currently consuming 5,000 acres an hour in my home state of California.
Wildfires also lead to worse air quality, which can cause more dangerous
flares of asthma, bronchitis and emphysema.
One side of the political spectrum has been ready to address climate change
and its effects on our health. One side has consistently believed that climate
change is a human-made problem that needs to be addressed. And it is not MAGA
Republicans.
According to the Center for American Progress, at least 123 members of
Congress, all members of the GOP, have made comments denying human-made
climate change, opposing the overwhelming majority of scientists who actually
study the Earth’s climate.
When he was president, Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris
climate treaty and has called global warming a hoax. He even claimed that “the
concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make
U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
Republicans have already been hard at work trying to deregulate pollution
standards and depower the Environmental Protection Agency.