America must lead the climate change fight or our leadership record is toast | Senators Ben Cardin and Sheldon Whitehouse

More prosperous countries have the largest carbon emissions and poorer countries bear the consequences

The atmosphere is warming. Ice is melting. Droughts are worsening; seas are warming, rising and acidifying. We're past theory and well into measurement on those points. Pope Francis recently observed that "[n]ever have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last 200 years." The matter of climate change is urgent, and it commands a moral dimension.

Related: The Earth, our home, is beginning to look like an immense pile of filth