Our Last Hope

...Continued from yesterday:
    Dear Future Cyberarchivist,
    On this day, September 8, 2019, Hurricane Dorian, after destroying several islands in the Bahamas,

... continues to slam into the eastern seaboard of North America,

...and the fires that were set by humans in the Amazon rain forest in Brazil are now raging out of control.

  There has been a global outcry over the deliberate burning of the Amazon (see yesterday's post), and a union of the seven wealthiest countries in the world known as G7 has offered to help Brazil extinguish the Amazon fires.

    But the President of Brazil, a man of great ego but questionable  judgment and competence named Jair Bolsonaro,

...has refused help, likely out of a mix of resentment, vanity and the desire for his country to reap the temporary profit to be gleaned from the permanent destruction of the rain forest.
        Most of the countries of the world have banded together in an accord  known as the Paris Agreement to work together to reduce carbon emissions and stop rising global temperatures.
        However my country, the United States of America, the wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet and the second greatest producer of the carbon emissions that are causing greenhouse gases and global warming, is not participating in the Paris Agreement.

     Our President, Donald Trump (see posts from  9/4/2019 and 9/6/2019), has pulled the United States out of the climate agreement and refuses to participate in the world-wide effort to reduce carbon emissions.

     Rather, Donald Trump's response to the global warming crisis has been to deny that the crisis exists and to deliberately take counter productive actions against the health of the environment, such as:

  - promoting the carbon-producing fossil fuel industries;

   - scrapping initiatives set in place by his predecessors to replace fossil fuels with clean energy;
 - repealing laws protecting our water and air quality;
 - cutting back regulations on the emission of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas;
 - rescinding a law banning old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs and requiring Americans to use only high energy-efficient light bulbs.

  According to scientists the small act of eliminating outmoded, inefficient light bulbs,

...would save the electricity output equivalent of at least 25 large power plants, enough energy to power all the homes in the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and would significantly cut back on greenhouse gases that are making the world too hot and causing our climate to go haywire.
     Some people say that Donald Trump is mad. And yet others worship him like a god.
      You, historian of the future, may ponder how a democratic nation such as the United States of America is - or maybe, as it may turn out, once was -  elected such a man as its leader. Living at this moment, I can only tell you that these are strange times.
       And so, though we human beings may lose - or, as you read this, did lose- this moment to save the health of our planet and subsequently our own health and well-being, at this moment there is still hope on the horizon.
      There is a cadre of new young progressive leaders in our government who oppose Donald Trump and his careless, poisonous policies and have taken up the cause of global warming.
        One of these leaders, a strong, outspoken Representative named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortetz

... and  a seasoned Senator named Edward Markey,

...have put forth legislation called the Green New Deal that would require the United States to begin transitioning from using carbon-producing energy sources to using only 100% renewable, zero- carbon emission energy sources.

     However the Green New Deal was killed on the floor of the Senate, one of our governing bodies, by a power-hungry old man named Mitch McConnell, a sycophant who sucks his power from his support of Donald Trump and who wields tight-fisted control over all the Senators of his party .

      Sadly, the Green New Deal has been mocked not only by the disciples of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, but by moderate Americans who gasp that the Green New Deal is too radical a move.
       Meanwhile the planet drowns and burns.
       But next year, in 2020, there will be another election in this country, and we of the United States of America will have the opportunity to vote out Donald Trump and our current legislators and vote in a new President and leaders who who would take up the Green New Deal and join the rest of the world in the fight to stop global warming. And in this outcome - remote as it might be - lies our last hope.
     And though you, Future Archivist, know whether at this moment in time we humans chose to save our world for ourselves, our children, and for future generations, or whether we passed on to all of you a ruined, less sustainable, less productive, less pleasant and livable planet, this is the moment.
      This is the moment.

References
https://globalnews.ca/news/5818696/brazil-amazon-france-macron-fires-help/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paris-climate-agreement-what-you-need-to-know/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-America-stacks-up-greenhouse-gas-emissions-180963560/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/climate/trump-light-bulb-rollback.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/climate/trump-auto-pollution-california.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal