As CNN’s analysis by John D. Sutter from Monday, April 22, 2019, and titled “We’re losing the war on climate change” leads off:

“(CNN) For years now, people like environmentalist and journalist Bill McKibben have been screaming from the treetops that we need a World War II-scale mobilization to fight the scourge of climate change.”

Attack on Pearl Harbor

Photo from Flicker. Unknown photographer. Photo not in CNN article.

“They’re right, of course. And on Earth Day — that 24-hour sliver of the calendar when we talk about the fact that humans exist on, and because of, a living planet — it’s clear not only that we are losing this war but that we still are failing to recognize it’s taking place at all…

…But the scale of the outrage in no way matches the magnitude of this disaster, which, like WWII, threatens to cripple or even obliterate human life on the planet as we know it.“

The article also mentions:

“Think about that in terms of the World War II analogy, Imagine the American public ranking WWII as No. 11 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Perhaps you think we haven’t seen the global warming version of Pearl Harbor yet. But we have seen it. Remember the European heat wave of 2003? An estimated 70,000 people died, according to a study published in the journal Comptes Rendus Biologies.…Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which killed an estimated 2,975 people, according to an analysis by George Washington University. Each was linked to — or was shown to have been made worse by — global warming.”
 
The article contains more information: Read the whole article on CNN