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Climate Change Denial Could Weaken U.S. Disaster Plans

pixabay.com

Scientists say the effects of climate change are being ignored by federal government disaster planners, to the potential detriment of millions of Americans.

Officials in agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agnecy and Federal Emergency Management Agency, at the request of the Trump administration, have stopped incorporating climate change into their plans for responding to catastrophic events, leaving Americans vulnerable to increasingly intense floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires and other disasters.

Ed Maibach, director of George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication, said he's very concerned about how climate-change denial is influencing the federal government's planning for future emergencies. "It is putting politics over the health and well-being of the American people," he said. "So, it's not just a matter of what we choose to call it. It's really a matter of choosing political advancement over reality. That's a really serious concern because people will get hurt."

An analysis by Scientific American found that terms such as "climate change," "sea-level rise" or "global warming" have been deliberately omitted from FEMA's 2018 strategic plan. Trump administration officials often call the science surrounding climate change either "not settled" or outright false.

Maibach said much of the climate data developed by government agencies over the years has simply disappeared. "I was actually told by somebody at EPA recently that they were happy to see that on my website, I'm using some of their climate-change materials because they don't exist on the EPA website anymore," he says. "They were basically expressing gratitude that somebody had managed to rescue them and was making them available to the public."

He considers dropping out of the Paris Climate Accords one of the greatest dangers to the future of Americans and, indeed, the entire population of the planet. "The goal of the Paris Climate Agreement is the most important public health goal that human civilization currently has," he said. "If we fail to achieve the goal of the Paris climate agreement keeping the warming well under 2 degrees, human health and well-being will suffer for dozens - if not hundreds - of generations."

Maibach said Americans should be deeply concerned that, because of planning that does not account for climate change, thousands - if not millions - of people could suffer needlessly during the next natural disaster.

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