The Planet Can’t Survive a Repeat of Barack Obama’s Climate Denialism

The new IPCC report confirms that if the Biden administration gives us a repeat of Obama’s climate denialism and refusal to aggressively cut back emissions, the climate crisis will radically escalate, devastating the lives and livelihoods of workers around the world.

US President Barack Obama speaks at an o

Former president Barack Obama speaks on expanding domestic oil and gas production near Maljamar, New Mexico, 2012. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)


If after yesterday’s news cycle you didn’t feel a pang of doom, you’re either a zen master, a recluse living in a news vacuum, or a nihilist. The new United Nations report on climate change predicts an actual bona fide apocalypse unless our civilization discards our fetish for incrementalism, rejects nothing-will-fundamentally-change fatalism, and instead finally takes the crisis seriously.

The bad news is that we’ve been here before during the last era of Democratic supremacy, and if the Obama Era we sleepwalked through now repeats itself, we’re done. It’s that simple.

The glimmer of good news is that we still have a bit of time left to defuse the worst parts of the climate bomb, and at least one part of the political dynamic may finally be changing.

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