7/30/2019 2012-12-13 Letter to Barack Obama

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Douglas A. GrandtP. O. Box 1582

El Dorado, CA 95623

December 13, 2012

President Barack ObamaThe White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NWWashington, D.C. 20500

Re: Life on Earth at the Edge of the Climate Cliff

Dear President Obama,

As the 112th Congress draws to a close, I write to urge your attentionto a real and urgent crisis:

the climate cliff.

The warming observed over the past 30 years is on an unsafe trajectory. Our global economy andlivelihood depend on a stable weather system, safe habitation, and productive agriculture.

The costs of continued fossil fuel combustion to society over the next several decades will reach intothe trillions of dollars in economic terms, and mass suffering in human terms. In light of the precipitousclimate cliff, the current focus of this Congress on a manufactured and vastly less significant fiscalcliff is disconcerting.

If greenhouse pollution is not curbed considerably, we will fall over the climate cliff, with organizedsociety plunging into damage of an unknowable depths. A plan that takes the climate cliff seriouslyshould be the starting point for discussions on the present fiscal debate.

2012 has shown that climate change is not a future problem, but one that is affecting Americans today.Much of the Atlantic coast is still reeling from Superstorm Sandy, which estimated to have caused at

least $60 billion in damage. 2012 was the warmest on record with unrelenting heat wave after heatwave. The Midwestern drought prompted the Department of Agriculture to declare the largest federaldisaster area in history. The National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that Arctic sea ice extenthad shattered the previous record an ominous sign of rapidly-accelerating climate change.

I implore you to speak out about the threat that the climate cliffposes.

In financial terms, the climate cliff is almost incalculably huge. The confirmed U.S. carbon reserves have acurrent valuation of $14 trillion. These reserves would alone be sufficient to collapse civilization if the 586gigatons of CO2 are emitted.

The Brookings Institute, Center for American Progress, American Enterprise Institute, and the EconomicPolicy Institute and millions of Americans support a price on carbon emissions that would help the theUnited States address its fiscal and climate challenges simultaneously.

Policymakers cannot credibly claim to care about our long-term economic well-being without acting now tosharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Use your Bully Pulpit. Take control and be the leader we elected you to be.

For life,

Doug Grandt

cc: Rex Tillerson