How did climate change become a partisan issue in America?

Do you remember Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth? Was it the first time you were shocked into realizing that our planet is undergoing major climatic changes you might be responsible for? Were you frightened back then?

The truly scary thing is that it has been 10 years since the film thrust global warming onto the agenda, and yet every year since then has been consistently the warmest on record. Hunters in the Arctic are being killed on unnaturally thin ice, starving polar bears trap scientists at their stations, London is hotter than Marrakech and Texas is being battered by softball-sized hail.

As world leaders meet at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is pushing for the ratification of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. With Britain, China and the US among those who have pledged to formally ratify their commitment to combat global warming, 55 nations need to come together to make it a legal reality.

Here is a look back at why this process has taken this long in one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases: America.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Josef Friedhuber