sacbee | Gov. Jerry Brown, issuing an ominous appeal on climate change, said
Tuesday that the world may already have “gone over the edge” on global
warming and that humanity must reverse course or face extinction.
Brown,
speaking at a summit of mayors from around the world, has increased his
already-high profile on climate change in recent months, working to
coalesce support for carbon reduction policies ahead of global climate
talks in Paris in December.
Pope Francis, who organized the conference after the release of his
encyclical on climate change, told the group through an interpreter that
he has “great hope ... that a fundamental basic agreement is reached”
among global leaders.
Brown’s remarks reflected the urgency of the effort, but also its limitations.
“We
don’t even know how far we’ve gone, or if we’ve gone over the edge,”
Brown said. “There are tipping points, feedback loops. This is not some
linear set of problems that we can predict. We have to take measures
against an uncertain future which may well be something no one ever
wants. We are talking about extinction. We are talking about climate
regimes that have not been seen for tens of millions of years. We’re not
there yet, but we’re on our way.”
Many Republicans have said the
effects of climate change are overstated. As he has several times, Brown
called them “troglodytes,” to applause. But the Democratic governor
went beyond partisan rabble-rousing, quoting balefully from St. Paul’s
biblical message to the Galatians.
