The Guardian reports:

The jubilation of the Paris climate agreement, where delegates from around the world triumphantly declared the climate crisis would finally be tamed, will have felt very hollow to many in the US in the six years since.

Following the landmark 2015 deal to curb dangerous global heating, the US has experienced four of its five hottest years ever recorded. A drought of a severity unprecedented in modern civilization has tightened its grip upon the American west, parching cities and farms, fueling the eight largest wildfires on record in California and smothering much of the rest of the country in a choking pall of smoke.

Enormous storms, again spurred on by the rising heat, have ravaged Puerto Rico and the Gulf coast. Many of these calamities are overwhelmingly likely to have been caused by climate change, scientists have found.

Between 1980 and 2020 the US has been struck by an annual average of seven disasters that caused at least $1bn in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The average for the most recent five years, 2016 to 2020, is a huge leap – at more than 16 such disasters a year.

In those five years, within the span of the Paris climate deal, the US has experienced more than $600bn in damages from climate change-fueled disasters, a new record. With governments gathering again in Scotland for crucial UN talks intended to further the progress made in Paris, Joe Biden is representing a country wounded like never before by the escalating emergency. [Continue reading…]