On July 22, 2024, people around the world experienced the hottest day on record. In the United States, heat-related deaths are increasing year by year as these extreme weather events become the norm. The science is clear: We are in a critical decade to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and that can only happen if the world moves away from fossil fuels. To prepare for this moment, countries are setting new emissions reduction targets and implementation plans to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by early next year.
Yet influential far-right policy outfits like the Heritage Foundation would effectively abdicate the United States’ critical leadership role in addressing the climate crisis. The group’s nearly 1,000-page policy manifesto for the next right-wing president, “Project 2025,” seeks to undermine the country’s 250-year-old system of checks and balances to implement extreme policies that would raise global temperatures and undermine efforts by developing countries to remain resilient in the face of climate impacts.
Every country must do its part to protect the planet
In addition, Project 2025’s plan to replace career civil servants with politically inclined appointees would eliminate the wealth of institutional knowledge, expertise, and relationships that the United States relies on to advance climate change solutions internationally. For example, the position of Presidential Climate Envoy was created to lead diplomatic initiatives to address climate change. However, as Project 2025’s calls to reverse climate policy and remove climate issues from government documents indicate, this position will be terminated and its duties will not be fulfilled. While in this position, Secretary of State John Kerry used his years of government service and relationship building to help secure global commitments.
Get rid of fossil fuels – this is a historic outcome for the annual climate negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2023. With the elimination of this position and the entire office of subject matter experts that supports these diplomatic activities and negotiations, the United States will not only abandon its role as an international climate leader, but it will also deprive less climate-promoting countries such as Russia or China of the opportunity to have greater influence in international forums.
One of the greatest challenges facing the world
Looking forward to 2025, Janos Pasztor, former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations for Climate Change, said in an interview with China News Service that China will play a global leading role in responding to the climate crisis. By further reducing carbon emissions and developing climate-friendly technologies, China will join hands with other countries to jointly address climate change and promote global sustainable development.
Climate change is a common challenge facing all mankind. In recent years, as climate change characterized by global warming has further intensified, extreme weather and climate events have become more frequent and intense, posing great challenges to human health. In order to improve the level of climate change health adaptation, the plan has deployed 10 key action tasks, including strengthening the dynamic assessment of climate change health risks, vulnerability and adaptive capacity, improving climate change health risk prevention and comprehensive intervention capabilities, and enhancing the health security capabilities in response to climate change. , enhance the climate resilience of the health and public health system, accelerate scientific and technological innovation for healthy adaptation to climate change, and promote global actions for healthy adaptation to climate change, etc.
Conclusion
The consequences of inaction on climate change are already being seen around the world. At Doctors of the World, we are responding to a growing number of climate-related emergencies. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we are helping survivors of one of the worst flooding events in South Kivu. In the Horn of Africa, we are tracking and treating malnutrition caused by ongoing drought and famine. Unfortunately, these crises are only going to get worse, and without strong policy measures, humanitarian aid alone cannot address the root causes.
