U.S. President Donald Trump spent 82-minutes, on his State of the Union address to Congress.  And the amount of time he spent on climate change: not a second.

CGTN’s Sean Callebs reports.

A U.S. Congressional Committee met on Tuesday to discuss the ills scientists say comes with climate change.   Some lawmakers say the clock is ticking and warning signs are everywhere.

U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz) warned, “Every day that we fail to act increases the cost of addressing the crisis for future generations.

Supercharged hurricanes and typhoons devastated coastal regions in Asia. And dry brittle conditions that haunted the U.S. west in 2018 are now baking Australia, fueling fires and triggering widespread drought.

“Australia has recorded the warmest January record for maximum, minimum and mean temperatures.  And, in fact, it’s been the warmest month on record for Australia,” Agata Imielska of the Australia Bureau of Meteorology said.

This week, a new report came with a dire warning that rising global temperatures could melt a third of the glaciers in the Himalayas by the end of the century. It’s a region home to Mount Everest and many of the other highest peaks in the world and would threaten the water supply of nearly 240 million people.

Many U.S. congressional members are encouraging the Trump administration to alter its course. 

“The coast of Alaska is literally disappearing into the ocean.  Indigenous communities are already having to relocate.  We will see more climate refugees as time goes on.  Parts of the planet where people live may well become uninhabitable,” Grijalva said.

At the same time, a massive hole has been located beneath a behemoth glacier in Antarctica. It is a glacier the size of the U.S. state of Florida.  If it melts, the massive chunk of ice could by itself have a huge impact on rising sea levels.

President Trump, however, remains a climate change skeptic.  He is touting the fact that the United States is right now the largest producer of oil and gas in the world.  And while other countries are developing renewable energy, Trumps vows to make coal, king once again.