(Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) While one Southwest airplane arrives another one gets ready to depart from the Oakland International Airport. The Port of Oakland in November approved an environmental impact report for a plan to expand the number of gates at Oakland International Airport by 55%. Then, in December, Bay Area News Group reported a downturn in annual airport passenger activity by 2.3% for San Jose and 1.8% for Oakland. The reporter bemoaned this as an economic setback. For the sake of all our children and grandchildren, I applaud this reduction. Why? Because climate scientists report a sustained reduction in global air traffic by just 2.5% per year could have a huge impact on the future of our planet. It would immediately halt commercial aviation’s substantial contribution to further global warming. And it’s why Oakland port officials should abandon the expansion plans for the airport they operate. Global warming is an accelerating catastrophe happening right before our eyes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently reported that between 1980 and 2024, there were 66 tropical cyclones, 203 severe storms, 23 wildfires, 24 winter storms, 44 floods, 31 droughts and nine freeze-disaster events in the United States that each resulted in economic losses of $1 billion or more, as measured in today’s dollars. All these disasters were deemed by NOAA to be effects of global warming. And the number of these events occurring yearly dramatically increased after 2010. The yearly average was three disaster events in the 1980s, six in the 1990s, seven in the 2000s, 13 in the 2010s and 22 so far in the 2020s. Climate scientists agree that we will reach a tipping point once Earth’s average surface temperature becomes 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average recorded between 1850 and 1900. When […]