USA HISTORY

CONTEMPORARY AMERICA (1992 2013)

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN

[SOURCES]
What does he think about climate change?

(A) We will deal with it later

(B) An expensive hoax

(C) It is not that big of a deal

(D) ** It is a existential threat

EXPLANATIONS BELOW

Concept note-1: -The phrase can refer to a literal threat to humanity’s existence, but also to the danger that unchecked climate change can pose to our ways of life and place in the natural world.

Concept note-2: -In the GCR community, existential risks are of global scale, with gradual or abrupt loss of potential, collapse, or even extinction of humanity. The civil society climate movement takes on these imaginaries of collapse but often more in a sense of the need of fundamental change.

Concept note-3: -“Let’s face reality. The climate crisis doesn’t care if you’re in a red or blue state. It’s an existential threat, ” Biden said in his 7 February address.

Concept note-4: -An existential threat is a threat to a people’s existence or survival. The second phrase, existential questions, references Existentialism, a 20th century philosophy concerned with questions about how and whether life has meaning, and why we exist.

Concept note-5: -Humans and wild animals face new challenges for survival because of climate change. More frequent and intense drought, storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and warming oceans can directly harm animals, destroy the places they live, and wreak havoc on people’s livelihoods and communities.