Environmental Problems and One Proposed Solution

I. The Shrinking Amazon
"Five decades ago, Brazil incentivized its people to colonize the Amazon." Since the inauguration of President Jair Bolosnaro in January, the rate of deforestation has soared..." "At least half of the shrinking forest will give way to savanna. With as much as 17% of the forest lost already. scientists believe that the tipping point will be reached at 20% to 25% of deforestation even if climate change is tamed." [1]

"Despite growing outrage and threats by Western leaders to withhold trade with Brazil until Bolosnaro reverses course. On the ground [Kate Sandy and allies] discovered the battle for the Amazon is close to being lost. The emboldened forces of development are screaming without restraint and the stakes for the planet couldn't be higher."

"The Amazon is 10 million years old. Home to 390 billion trees the vast basin reigns over South America an is an unrivaled nest of biodiversity." "August is burning season when Amazon farmers use a rare period of dry weather to set fires to clear fields ready to plant crops. But 2019 was different; satellite data showed more than 46,000 fires in the Amazon, an alarming 111% increase over the last year."

"Cattle farming accounts for up to 80% of deforested land In 2018, Brazil exported some $6 billion worth of beef, more than any other country in history."

"The [Amazon] forest stores up to 120 billion metric tons of carbon, equivalent to almost 12 years of global emissions at current rates."

II. Climate Change Is Not Healthful
"The Fourth National Climate Assessment, published in 2018, by a collaboration among 13 U.S. scientific agencies, highlights how higher temperatures, severe whether events and rising seas can contribute to health-related cardiopulmonary illness, infectious disease and mental-health issues." "Climate change is a public-health issue. It has been linked to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and can shove the body's response to existing environmental assaults into overdrive." "In the U.S.,urban communities of color, often also low-income areas, are especially at risk." [2]

III. Destroying Wetland Habitat
"Ecologists say coastal wetlands are capable of trapping carbon up to 40 times faster per hectare than tropical rainforests. But over the past 400 years, farmland, coastal development, and rising sea levels have combined to destroy 91% of wetland habitat on the Essex coast." "From 2005 to 2015, Europe's forest cover grew by the equivalent of 1,900 football fields every day, as the E.U. pent several billion euros to fund the planting, often on farmland that had been abandoned because of changing agricultural practices in places like France and Italy." [3]

"A Pew Research poll released three weeks after the 2008 Iowa caucuses found that 1% of Americans ranked the issue as the nation's most important problem."

"Across Iowa, the annual precipitation level averaged less than 33 inches during every decade of the 20th century." "This spring alone, extreme rain put 100,000 acres of farmland underwater in the state, resulting in tens of millions of dollars to farmers." "By 2050, climate change threatens to erase all the gains made in agricultural productivity since the 1980s in the Midwest, meaning farmers will need to spend heavily or cut production, according to the National Climate Assessment."

IV. Bernie's Secret Climate Weapon
Bernie Sanders's Green New Deal "calls for government action on a heroic scale --committing the United States to do its fair share to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, in line with the findings of the landmark scientific report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPCC) last October -- and outlines a set of bold policies to achieve that extremely ambitious goal. The plan's 10-year, $16.3 trillion price tag raised eyebrows among the usual inside-the-Beltway suspects." [4]

Footnotes:
[1] Kate Sandy, "The Tipping Point," TIME, September 23, 2019.

[2] Adrienne L. Hollis, "Climate change is he global..." TIME, September 23, 2019.

[3] Ciara Nugent, "Take a Walk..." TIME, September 23, 2019.

[4] Tom Athanasiou, "Bernie's Secret Climate Weapon," The Nation, September 30, 2019.