Trump’s administration openly and explicitly considers climate action “unnecessary.” After Trump took the oath of office, control of whitehouse.gov switched from the Obama administration to his. What an administration chooses to put on a website on Day One is some indication of where the administration’s priorities lie. So, we hunted for the word “climate” on Trump’s new whitehouse.gov site. We found three hits! But, sadly, two came from biographies of First Ladies, mentioning the favorable and mild climates in which they lived.
But the third hit is a bona fide Trump administration contribution! And it appears on a page titled “An America First Energy Plan”! This sounded promising. Until we read the following: “President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.”
Take a deep breath and consider that statement—he is “is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan….”
The Climate Action Plan is unnecessary?!
What world is he living in? In our world, the global average temperature exceeded all-time historical highs for the third year in a row, and observation that even Fox News reported. The village of Newtok, Alaska is slipping into the ocean as melting permafrost causes the village to lose 70 feet of land a year, forcing villagers to find a way to move their town. And the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is evacuating its Halley VI Research Station during the Antarctic Winter because a giant expanding crack in the Antarctic ice shelf threatens the station. In our world, we need to quit burning things because burning things increases the CO2 in our atmosphere, which warms the climate.
But instead of tending to climate change, Trump intends to “take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own.”
Perhaps President Trump is just living in a world of “alternative facts.”
It’s a new day. If you want to learn about what’s happening to our rapidly warming world, don’t turn to whitehouse.gov. The Trump administration wants to drill, baby, drill, and burn, baby, burn, and—apparently—keep silent on what happens when we do.
Inaugurations prompt reflection and expectation. Why did the country choose Donald J. Trump? And what lies ahead? Although the president controls only one of the three branches of government and doesn’t have the power to unilaterally swerve in a new direction, Trump’s desire to swerve concerns us. Over the last eight years, the United States has started, slowly, to admit the environmental crisis that our culture’s consumption has sown. The world community accepts that human choice and actions are increasing the global temperature. As a species, we are now acknowledging our responsibility to avoid the predicted—and catastrophic—impacts. The science connecting our conduct to climate change is as clear as the connection between smoking and cancer.
