Climate change is real, without a doubt.

Just ask the scientists. Or any legitimate fact-checker.

Those who deny the reality of climate change and global warming are the same foolish, mistaken people who claim that Coronavirus (Covid-19) is a hoax and refuse to wear masks or maintain social distances.

All of a sudden, climate change is here—up close and personal. We’re witnessing it with our own eyes. Who can deny the devastation ravaging the USA’s Pacific coast (and parts of the midwest) caused by “uncontrollable” forest fires?

Faster and more furious hurricanes threaten the Western hemisphere – even unprecedented back-to-back dynamos along the USA’s Gulf coast – while typhoons, monsoons, and tsunamis invoke nature’s wrath in the East. Already this year, we’ve run out of names for these tempests and will need to revert to the Greek alphabet.

Flash flooding is now commonplace, even as raging forest fires devour California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado … as well as Spain and Portugal. Meanwhile, droughts of dry and parched land have come home to roost.

Earthquakes are occurring everywhere. Even in Spain and Portugal!

The Amazon is ablaze, while the Everglades are being turned into suburban housing. The sea is swallowing villages, eating away at shorelines, withering crops. And our oceans are bloated by unimaginable amounts of plastic, choking their marine inhabitants.

In effect, we’re losing our belts and suspenders, as Atlas shrugs and we drop our coverings: We’ve been warned!

“Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere are at record levels, and emissions that saw a temporary decline due to the pandemic are heading towards pre-COVID levels, while global temperatures continue to hit new highs,” according to a major new United Nations report.

“United in Science 2020,” released September 9th, highlights the increasing and irreversible impacts of climate change on glaciers, oceans, nature, economies … along with its cost on people across the globe; manifest more and more often through disasters such as record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and floods.

Speaking at the launch of the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized that there is “no time to delay” if the world is to slow the trend of the devastating impacts of climate change, and limit temperate rise to 1.5 degree-Celsius.

“Whether we are tackling a pandemic or the climate crisis, it is clear that we need science, solidarity, and decisive solutions,” said Guterres.

If there’s any hope for the planet’s survival, it won’t come from survivalists building bunkers and shelters to protect themselves from the doom and gloom … or from the Trumpers, for that matter … but from youngsters.

In 2019, Time magazine chose 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg as its Person of the Year. The young lady had made a splash that year leading protests around the world, speaking at the United Nations, meeting with the Pope, and sparring with the president of the United States on Twitter.

Students protest, demanding global action on climate change as part of the “Fridays for Future” movement in Madrid. Youngsters in Spain are using social media to create groups aimed at pressuring politicians and civil society leaders

Here in Portugal, six youths have filed an “unprecedented” climate change lawsuit against almost all of Europe – 33 countries! — for failing to take adequate action on the crisis that they say threatens their human rights.

The case was filed on September 3 in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. It is the first climate case brought directly to this international court. Lawyers for the young plaintiffs will argue that European governments’ current plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient to prevent catastrophic climate change and therefore constitute human rights violations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

“If successful, the 33 countries would be legally bound, not only to ramp up emissions cuts, but also to tackle overseas contributions to climate change, including those of their multinational companies,” the charity Global Legal Action Network, which is providing legal support for the case, explained in a press release.

“It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch.”

That is what Donald Trump said during a televised summit in California focused on the catastrophic wildfires ripping through the state and other regions of the western United States. He claimed that “exploding trees” were the catalyst.

Trump—a notorious denier of climate science and the global consensus that human activity and fossil fuel emissions are driving planetary heating—has met his match in the youngsters who are so much smarter and wiser. My money (if I had any) would be on those kids!

Shared here are personal observations, experiences, and happenstance that actually occurred to us as we moved from the USA to begin a new life in Portugal and Spain. Collected and compiled in EXPAT: Leaving the USA for Good, the book is available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook editions from Amazon and most online booksellers.