by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director
If it wasn’t clear before the election, the first days of the Trump administration have solidified the reality that America’s current commander in chief has no interest in addressing global warming — a threat that compounds all other threats facing our economy, our national security, and our environment.
Indeed, the threat of global warming has become more than a political talking point; it’s a matter of urgent and overwhelming importance to the human race. The science is clear. The critical part of the debate — whether human-caused global warming is happening — is over. The world’s most accomplished scientists, including those at NASA, agree: global warming is real, it’s exacerbated by human activity, and it’s already happening.
Natural and human emissions of greenhouse gases — gases that absorb infrared heat, most notably, carbon dioxide and methane — stay in the Earth’s atmosphere and prevent heat from escaping into outer space. This is the well-known greenhouse effect and, up to a point, it keeps the Earth’s temperature warm enough to be habitable. But when the volume of those gases in the atmosphere increases as a result of human activity, so does the amount of heat absorbed and reflected back to the Earth’s surface.
In the context of weather, which measures atmospheric conditions over a short period of time (e.g. it is snowing in New York today and it was sunny yesterday), a couple of degrees increase in temperatures can seem trivial. But in the context of climate — which measures atmospheric behavior over a longer term (e.g. the average global temperature has steadily increased about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the 20th century) — a small change is a very big deal.
The increase in average global temperatures — a signal of a changing climate, not mere weather — is already melting polar ice caps and raising sea levels, triggering extreme weather patterns including record hurricanes, flooding, snowstorms, tornados, and droughts, and altering the chemistry of the ocean, destroying ecosystems that are critical to coral reefs and to everything else, including humans, on up the food chain. The time for doubt has passed and the time for action — no matter the political climate — is urgently upon us.
Donald Trump’s pre-inauguration rhetoric dismissing global warming has already begun wreaking havoc, and we’re less than two weeks into his administration.
Trump’s statements on the campaign trail repeatedly suggested that to address this very real, very serious threat would be detrimental to our country. He even went so far as to call global warming a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese and promised his supporters he would “cancel” the Paris Climate Agreement and remove moratoriums on energy development, including a temporary moratorium on new coal leases meant to allow for consideration of global warming and inadequate royalties paid to taxpayers.
Along with so many others around the world, my reaction to candidate Trump’s rhetoric ranged from frustration to speechless disbelief, and these emotions have only grown more complex and difficult to grapple with since he became president. That’s because falsehoods and reckless actions in defiance of scientific facts by one of the most powerful people in the world can catastrophically impact the very future of humanity.
Since inauguration day, public concerns that President Trump has no interest in addressing the critical threat of global warming have grown almost by the hour. Within mere moments after Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office, the climate change page on the White House website disappeared and was replaced with “An America First Energy Plan,” which states that "President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as [America’s] Climate Action Plan” and makes no mention of prioritizing wind, solar, or other sustainable energy sources.
Pages like a public guide to the National Environmental Policy Act and another on the Council on Environmental Quality were also scrubbed from the White House website. On the fourth day of his presidency, Donald Trump signed executive orders to revive both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, both of which had been stopped under the Obama administration after powerful public opposition that had cited, among other important concerns, global warming. In a meeting with corporate executives the Monday after his inauguration, Trump pledged to cut regulations “by 75 percent, maybe more.” And on Wednesday, the news broke that the Trump administration had instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to remove its climate change web page, which offers public access to climate change information and years of climate data. The news of his climate recklessness continues to roll in.
Here on the Colorado Plateau, the consequences of a changing climate are impossible to ignore. Arid and remote, the Colorado Plateau is a paradox of power and fragility. From Zion, Canyonlands, and Arches national parks, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, from the Native American ruins deep in the Grand Canyon up the lifelines of the West — the Colorado and Green rivers — increasing average temperatures and abnormal and extreme weather patterns will alter plateau water supplies for the worse along with the lives of people who call the plateau home.
Ironically, despite the Colorado Plateau’s unique vulnerability to global warming, it is also the source of many of the natural resources that exacerbate a changing climate. The most promising deposits of oil shale and tar sands — one of the dirtiest and least efficient fuels mankind could develop — are found on the northern end of the plateau in parts of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Coal mining and coal fired power plants have been a linchpin for many local economies on the plateau. Oil and natural gas wells and the methane emissions that come with them — an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — dot the landscape. And one of the largest methane “hotspots” in the country hovers over the Four Corners region of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona.
Climate threats, and the hurdles facing those who feed their families with jobs in fossil fuel industries, cannot be overstated. But no matter the difficulty of addressing climate change, denying its existence, refusing to address it, and, worse, removing the public’s access to climate information could cost all of us on the Colorado Plateau more than we can imagine.
The Trust is dedicated to using a combination of grassroots action, science, and the law to hold our politicians and decision-makers accountable on climate change. We’re continuing our fight for more climate-conscious decisions by federal agencies on the Colorado Plateau, and digging in further in defense of public access to important information and decision-making processes that are under direct attack by the new administration.
Trump is already pushing for more fossil fuel development on federal public lands along with the elimination of “harmful and unnecessary” environmental regulations. The public now faces the two-pronged task of preventing reckless development of fossil fuels and protecting the safeguards that have been put in place to ensure that our air remains safe to breathe and that our limited water supplies remain intact and contaminant-free.
The only way to stop America’s rapid loss of climate progress under the new administration is to remain vigilant and to stand up for what we know is right. We do this by demonstrating our strength in numbers, by contacting our decision-makers, writing comments during environmental review processes, or attending public meetings. We know it’s not easy to follow every important issue all of the time, but that’s where the Trust can help.
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