‘There Is a Real Opportunity Here That I Think Biden Is Capturing’

Mr. Leonhardt is a senior writer at The Times. During the months that Joe Biden and President Trump were campaigning against each other, vast sections of the American West caught on fire. More than burned, and the air in California, Oregon and Washington was sometimes more harmful to breathe than in the pollution-clogged cities of India. In the Atlantic Ocean this year, there have been more big storms recorded than in any previous year 29 thus far, so many that the group that names storms exhausted the English alphabet and had to switch to Greek. Nine of those storms in the span of a single day, an event that was rare before the planet was as warm as it now is. Worldwide, the was the hottest ever measured, and 2020 may end up being the hottest year. The Arctic is warming even faster than the rest of the planet, and glaciers are losing more ice each year than can be found in all of the European Alps. Sea levels now seem to be rising at an accelerating pace. In Siberia, melting ice that cause gigantic explosions, leaving craters that are up to 100 feet deep. It does not proceed at a steady pace, and scientists are often unsure precisely what its effects are and which weather patterns are random. But the sum total of the evidence is clear and terrifying. The Earth is continuing to warm, breaking new records as it does, and the destructive effects of climate change are . Future damage will almost certainly be worse, maybe much worse. Yet there is also a major way in which 2020 has the potential to be a turning point in the other direction. A president who has called climate change a hoax whose administration has tried government scientists and has overhauled federal policy more pollution has lost re-election. He has lost to a candidate who made climate policy a bigger part of his campaign than any previous winning president. The last two Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, put a higher priority on expanding health insurance than fighting climate change. Mr. Biden, by contrast, has said he will accomplish his unavoidable short-term priorities controlling the coronavirus and restarting the economy in significant part by fighting climate change. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and your Times account, or for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? . Want all of The Times? .