Co-Author of Chilling Climate Change Report Warns of Imminent Threat to Economy
*By Christian Smith*
If you didn't find this weekend's dramatic climate report unsettling, read it again.
Andrew Light, distinguished senior fellow at the World Resources Institute and co-author of the report, said on Cheddar Monday that the effects of climate change are imminent ー unless the federal government acts now.
"It is threatening almost every sector of the economy ー of course more so those sectors that are dependent on natural resources," Light said.
"We should start moving with the most effective and efficient policies that can begin switching our energy sources in earnest from fossil-fuel based to non-fossil fuel based, and also begin to lead the entire country on measures towards adaptation and resilience."
The Trump administration released its dire findings on the Friday after Thanksgiving, timing many have called suspicious ー among them, Politico reporter Matt Daily, who thinks officials meant to bury the news on a holiday weekend.
"I don't know if burying it on Black Friday was a very successful tactic," Daily told Cheddar, noting that the attempt to downplay the news only handed environmental advocates a new line of criticism against the administration.
The [National Climate Assessment](https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/), which is required by federal law to be published every four years, found that climate change will cost the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century and will endanger thousands of American lives each year. The White House issued a [statement](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/climate/trump-climate-report.html) saying that the report, which was instituted under the Obama administration, was "largely based on the most extreme scenario” of global warming.
Daily disagreed.
"That's a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly," Daily said. "The report offers quite a wide range of what's possibly coming our way by the end of the century."
Light noted that some states and cities were already moving in the right direction ー but he added the federal government needs to take the lead.
"The U.S. federal government is not leading even though we are seeing states and cities do quite a lot," Light said.
Cheddar Politics breaks down the seismic shift in White House rhetoric surrounding Russia's war on Ukraine. President Biden began calling the alleged war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in the Kyiv region "genocide." Foreign policy and national security analyst A. Ari Aramesh joins Cheddar News to discuss what constitutes genocide and whether the developments in Ukraine qualify.
President Joe Biden said he is considering forgiving some federal student debt, a step that would help him fulfill a campaign promise and provide relief to borrowers who took out thousands of dollars in loans to finance their higher education.
Catching you up on what you need to know on April 28, 2022, with Elon Musk mocking Twitter's top legal exec Vijaya Gadde on the platform itself, a probe in George Floyd's death finding discrimination within the Minneapolis police force, the latest California drought leading to new water restrictions, and more.
Tech giant Microsoft won a military contract for the production of its IVAS (integrated visual augmentation system) combat goggles, based on its HoloLens ARG tech, worth up to $21.9 billion over 10 years. However, the Pentagon is now saying that the device "has not yet demonstrated the capability to serve as a fighting goggle," and that the Army made mistakes in the program's initial stages by not clearly describing minimum performance standards. While testing continues, concerns have grown outside of the Defense Department to Congress and even within Microsoft itself. Cheddar's Ken Buffa takes a deeper look at the possible boondoggle.
U.S. stocks fell sharply to close Tuesday's session, with the Nasdaq dropping 3.95% and hitting a new one-year low. Frances Newton Stacy, Director of Strategy for Optimal Capital, joins Cheddar News to discuss her reaction to how markets closed the session, and to break down Q3 2022 earnings from Microsoft. "Netflix was sort of the big warning, and I think Big Tech was down today in anticipation of these earnings," she says.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed into law a bill that strips Disney World of its special self-governing status. This came after Disney spoke out against Florida's so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, some saying in retaliation of that. Ben Means, Professor of Law and the John T. Campbell Chair in Business and Professional Ethics at the University of South Carolina School of Law, breaks down how the new law might impact Disney’s business moving forward.
Catching you up on what you need to know on April 27, 2022, with Tesla stocks absorbing an initial hit following Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, Russia pausing its natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 mission taking off, and more.
Russia and the United States have exchanged prisoners. Russia released a Marine veteran jailed in Moscow while the U.S. released a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving a prison sentence in Connecticut.
