It would be madness to walk away from international climate agreements, but that’s what a Trump presidency would mean. Congressional candidate Justin Fareed, backed by coal and oil money, recently jumped on the climate denial bandwagon, saying at a debate in San Luis Obispo, "There are multiple different factors that contribute to it.”
Scientists, including those at award-winning UCSB and CalPoly, say definitively the climate is changing due to human activity. This year will be the hottest year on record. Weather-related disasters — fires, drought, floods—have more than doubled since 1980, and land-based plants and animals are moving pole-ward at a rate of 15 feet per day.
The 2016 election will determine whether or not we act according to the best scientific information. Will we reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build the clean energy economy of the future? Or will we double down on fossil fuels, hand over our national parks and ocean to private extraction interests, and head down a perilous path of run-away global warming?