IPCC's call for action should be welcomed

The 2018 United Nations climate change conference, now in session in Katowice, Poland, had to take an unplanned day off on Sunday, because the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait blocked the endorsement of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's special report on what would happen if the average global temperatures rise by 1.5 degrees, and how to ensure they don't.

Three years back in Paris, when countries agreed on the need for joint actions to contain global warming, they called for such a scientific report on what needed to be done. That report is now in, and the four countries didn't like the implications.

The US State Department said the US noted the IPCC report but did not "welcome" it, as to do so would be to endorse it. Which is basically saying we can all go to hell in a fossil-fueled handcart, because not even Mother Nature gets to tell this administration what to do.