Help vulnerable adapt to climate change

A tragedy is unfolding because of the overconfidence of groups like Dr. Claire Herrick’s Citizens’ Climate Lobby (‘Harmful to your health,’ Daily Sun, Sept. 17) that we know the future of climate change and that we can control it merely by regulating our carbon dioxide emissions. Across the world people suffer due to climate change. Yet aid agencies are unable to secure sufficient funds to help them because, of the $1 billion spent globally every day on climate finance, only 6 percent of it is goes to helping vulnerable people adapt to climate change today. The remaining 94 percent is poured into mitigation, trying to stop phenomena that might someday happen.

This is immoral, valuing the lives of people yet to be born more than those in need today. Reports such as those of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change illustrate that there is no known consensus among scientists about what caused the past century’s modest warming or even whether warming or cooling lie ahead. Experts do agree, however, that climate always changes and people need help now. Let’s help them to the degree we can afford and stop pretending we have a crystal ball to the future.

TOM HARRIS

Executive Director

International Climate Science Coalition