Kudos to Obama, to China, to America for carbon plan

Here's a hypothetical quandary: Your house is about to catch on fire because outdated wires are overloaded and overheating. You call an electrician, but he's overbooked and says you can fix it yourself by unplugging your heater and using your fireplace instead. You call the electric utility company, but the manager there says the house wires are your responsibility. You call the fire department, but the dispatcher says firefighters can't put out a fire before it sparks. Everyone -- even you -- waits for someone else to take the first step toward solving an emerging problem, and though you suddenly are trying, you may be striving too little too late.

While the example is overly simplistic, the take-away seems to be close to where the world has been on climate change -- even as we wait for our Earth to catch fire.

This week, the leaders of the world's two biggest carbon emitters -- America and China -- stopped playing the "you-first" game and agreed to cooperate on lowering climate change-causing pollution.

What was the reaction from the new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the new GOP congressional majority? If you put their comments together you'd get something like this: Turn up your thermostat and go back to sleep. There is no climate change, China's getting a pass, and constructive energy policy will only cost jobs and hurt Americans. Trust us: we're the conservatives, and we've got Coal's back.

No doubt, those comments will be repeated and replayed for the next two weeks on Fox News with no facts to back them up until -- out in faithful Fox echo-box viewerland -- the lies will solidify into the dishonest "truths." (According to mid-terms national exit polling by Edison Research, 86 percent of voters who identified themselves as Democrats said climate change was a serious problem, while of those who identified themselves as Republicans, 31 percent said climate change was a serious problem, and 67 percent said otherwise.)

But here are some real facts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

• In 2012, the average temperature across the contiguous United States was 3.2 degrees above normal. The year ranked as the warmest one since records began in 1895, and the decade from 2000 to 2009 had twice as many record highs as record lows.

• Since 1901, precipitation has increased a half percent a decade in the lower 48 U.S. states, and 0.2 percent per decade worldwide. Nine of the top 10 years for extreme one-day precipitation events in the U.S. have occurred since 1990.

• The amount of heat stored in the ocean has increased substantially since the 1950s, and the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice has decreased over time. In September 2012 it was the smallest on record.

• Sea level has risen by more than 8 inches in some places along the Mid-Atlantic and Gulf coasts since 1960.

• Birds are paying attention. Since the 1960s, migratory birds have moved their winter breeding sites to the north by an average of 40 miles.

Together, the U.S. and China each day emit 45 percent of the world's carbon emissions, and a clear majority of world scientists say carbon emissions are causing these climate changes.

We are the first generation to feel the effects, and we're the last generation that can do something about it.

According to the new pact, China will pursue policies and changes to stop its growth in carbon emissions by 2030. To do that, China must begin immediately to increase its clean energy mix to about 20 percent by that year. One climate expert has likened that to China building an entire United States-worth of renewable energy infrastructure in 16 years.

Meanwhile, the United States will cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 -- bumping up our earlier goal of reducing those emissions by 17 percent by 2020, and much of that is already accomplished.

In the past six years, we've tripled our wind energy and increased our solar energy component by 10 times. That didn't cost jobs, it created jobs. Just look at the newest job growth and unemployment figures.

And is it costing us more? Well, within a decade all our cars will go twice as far on a gallon of gas and, by the way, gas prices are down.

Right now, China burns four times as much coal as America. And you see it in their smoggy air.

Here, in our clean air, you see progress.

We're glad China has signed onto change, and we salute our president for his part in helping bring about that change and its likely influence toward a global cleaner energy.

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