BY WILLIAM S. BECKER
Before the 2024 presidential and congressional election campaigns get much older, candidates and voters should get a few things straight.
First, no international, national or local issue is more important than global warming. There is some debate over whether global warming is a crisis. It is. Voters and candidates must treat it as one.
In August, the Pew Research Center gathered 32 global warming skeptics to explore the reasons for their doubts. “The interviews revealed that language describing climate change as a crisis and an urgent threat was met with suspicion by many participants,” Pew found.
Why? Most interviewees considered claims of a climate crisis to be “overblown rhetoric.” One explained, “I do believe the climate is changing, but I believe it is changing in a natural cycle that happens all the time.”
It’s the word “believe” that confuses the issue. Global warming is about science, not beliefs or politics. The realization we must do something is not a religion or a political party. It’s a rational response to an existential threat on which the world’s climate scientists agree with virtual unanimity.
