In rapid succession, the results of this month’s election and the release of blockbuster new scientific studies are widening the distance between the politics and science of climate change.
The massive new study released by federal scientists Friday, like another landmark analysis in October from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, identified an accelerating convergence of risks from a changing climate. …
The report forecasts that the most severe changes could be felt in some of the regions, particularly the Southeast and upper Midwest and northern Plains, that emit the most carbon per dollar of economic activity and elect many of the members of Congress most resistant to acting on climate change.
These increasingly tangible disruptions might create more political pressure in those states for action on the climate. More likely, any federal initiative to combat climate change for the next several years will need to find ways to circumvent the Senate’s brown blockade. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, CNN