This past weekend marked the start of Climate Week. Climate Week is an annual event dating back to 2009 and runs during the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting held in New York City. On Monday, international leaders will convene for the opening ceremony to receive updates on the damage caused by climate change and the threat it poses. The Climate Week events are designed to spur global, national and local actions and to develop plans on how to address the worsening climate catastrophe.

The Week offers hundreds of events held by various organizations that focus on new science that underscores the threats posed by an increasingly heating planet and policies to address them.

There’s no shortage of pressing topics as the climate news is bad and getting worse. Here are some:

• Earth’s temperature has increased by about 2.3°F (1.1°C) since the pre-industrial era – putting the planet close to the 2015 Paris Agreement redline of no more than 2.7°F (1.5°C).
• 2024 was the warmest year on record, surpassing the previous records set in 2016 and 2023.  The decade from 2015 to 2024 was the warmest recorded decade. 
• The rate of global warming since 1970 has been faster than at any other time in the last 2,000 years. 
• The warming is triggered by greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of oil, gas, and coal, causing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels to reach a record high of over 421 parts per million (ppm) in 2024. Current CO₂ levels are more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels. The annual rate of increase in atmospheric CO₂ over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases.
• The increased heat has impacted the world. Global average sea level has risen 8-9 inches since 1880. The rate of sea level rise has more than doubled since the 20th century. Contributing to that sea level rise is the melting of glaciers worldwide. Glaciers tracked globally have lost ice for 36 consecutive years. The Arctic Ocean has lost an area of sea ice equivalent to South Carolina each year between 1979 and 2021.

Climate Week is supposed to create an environment in which the world’s leaders learn and act. In fact, the theme of this year’s Climate Week is turning ambition into action.

Yet, our nation, the world’s leader and the historic leader in the emission of greenhouse gases, is not only missing in action, but actively accelerating the damage to the environment.

As part of Washington’s anti-science agenda, the Trump Administration and the Congress have taken steps to demolish what progress had been made in the United States in curbing the emissions of greenhouse gases and better preparing the nation for the more intense storms, heat, and sea level rise. Here are some examples:

• The United States has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement. That agreement establishes that the world will take steps to keep the planet from heating up beyond 2.7°F (1.5°C) of pre-industrial temperatures, the level at which the world’s experts warn could lead to a devastating climate catastrophe for the planet.

• The Trump administration proposed revoking the 2009 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action that found that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. This ruling allows the EPA to regulate carbon emissions.
• The administration declared a “national energy emergency” to justify redirecting the federal government toward greater use of fossil fuels.
• The administration has cut funding for climate science research across multiple federal agencies, including the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), fired hundreds of scientists, and removed access to scientific information on climate change from government websites.
• The administration also targeted actions by states that are trying to deal with climate-related problems. Here in New York, for example, the Trump Administration has attacked New York’s landmark law that shifts some of the mounting financial costs caused by climate disasters from taxpayers to the largest oil companies.

Instead of curbing the damages done by climate change, Washington is making it worse. And we will all suffer with the consequences.

All is not lost. Europe is doing all it can to meet climate goals, for example. The European Union recently reported that it will have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50% by the year 2030. That goal was set as a midpoint measure to meet the science-based goal of virtually eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. If the EU can do it, we in the United States can, too. Unfortunately, those in Washington seem dead set on making things worse, not better.

Here in New York, we must do better. New York’s goal is to reduce its GHG emissions by 40% by the year 2030, setting the bar much lower than the EU. Yet, the state has not accomplished a lot in reducing GHG. In the year 2022 (latest data available), New York reported that it had only reduced GHG by less than 10%. While there is still time, the state must start ramping up its efforts to meet its goal.

The important thing to remember is that the world’s climate is deteriorating and doing so rapidly. The oil industry and its allies in Washington and Albany are doing all they can to undermine climate science and the public policies that flow from it.

We should all know the facts and demand that our representatives follow science and not the nihilism that is pushing the world toward catastrophe. If we don’t, the planet will continue to heat up and our options will get fewer and much more expensive.