Climate Change Agreement

A hundred and ninety nations, including the United States, have accepted an agreement on climate change.

“The landmark Paris agreement on climate change will enter into force on Nov. 4, after a coalition of the world's largest polluters and small island nations threatened by rising seas pushed it past a key threshold on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama hailed the news as "a turning point for our planet," and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the agreement's strong international support a "testament for the urgency of action." Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech, called it: "A moment of bright hope in the increasingly discouraging landscape of climate science.”  By MICHAEL ASTOR, ASSOCIATED PRESS UNITED NATIONS — Oct 5, 2016, 8:55 PM ET http://tinyurl.com/h9cttyq

As Hurricane Matthew moves northward along the east coast of the U.S., this announcement should give citizens a sense of relief. This international treaty will safeguard the country from horrendous and sudden climate change.

We, the citizens of the world, owe a great debt to the politicians. They know that their collective signatures -- ratifying this accord -- will keep hurricanes at bay and glaciers from receding and the oceans from rising.

Were it not for the previous climate change treaties, we could have witnessed more than this hurricane to hit the eastern coast. After all, we were lucky to avoid these storms since Katrina in 2005.

Sleep well, friends.