Each new Trump lie and stupid decision seems to be worse than the previous one. Short of starting a nuclear war, the most recent may well be the worst. Others have undermined democracy in the United States. The latest one threatens the survival of human civilization as we know it.
On Thursday, Donald Trump announced he rescinded a 2009 decision by the Environmental Protection Administration that because of undisputed scientific reports that climate change endangers human health and the environment the federal government would regulate greenhouse gas emissions to limit pollution. The designation gave the federal government the legal authority to control the burning of fossil fuels that are dangerously heating the planet. Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence and international agreement on the threat, Trump, either out of profound ignorance or because of his 2024 election campaign received an estimated $450 million from the oil and gas industry, calls human caused climate change a “hoax” and a “con job” and climate scientists “stupid people.” Americans and the world will suffer the consequences.
Joining Trump for the announcement, was Environmental Protection Agency administrator, a Trump appointee, who praised the President for ending an “ideological crusade” against the use of fossil fuels that “strangled entire sectors of the United States economy.” Led by Zeldin, the EPA will no longer protect the environment. To protect the economy, Trump and Zeldin are prepared to strangle people. Scientists predict that abandoning climate regulations could cause 58,000 premature deaths and almost 40 million additional asthma attacks in the United States alone in the next three decades. Forest wildfires, intensified by climate change, could kill another 70,000 Americans by 2050.
Scientists have documented the threat posed by greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by cars, power plants, and factories at least since the 1950s. In 1969, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Assistant to President Nixon for Domestic Policy, wrote a memorandum explaining the greenhouse gas effect and “instability through the burning of fossil fuels.” In 1988, Dr. James Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that “the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements” and NASA was 99% certain that observed temperature changes were not natural variation and “evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”
In 1992, the United Nations issued a Convention on Climate Change following an Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Convention, eventually ratified by 154 governments, sought to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at levels that would prevent major climate change. In a follow up, Convention signatories met in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 where they agreed on legally binding limitations on the use of fossil fuels that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels. In the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, participating countries agreed to try to limit global warming to below 2°C. Donald Trump withdraw the United States from the agreement in both his first and second administrations.
Since the start of the industrial era at the end of the 18th century the burning of fossil fuels has increasingly caused global warming, climate change, and extreme weather events. Because the United States was one of earliest and largest industrialized countries it is responsible for more carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere than any other nation, about 25%. It is currently the second largest polluter after China, but per capita, the United State remains the largest. While other countries are trying to reduce their carbon footprint, repeal of the endangerment finding is expected to increase United States greenhouse gas emissions by ten percent over the next three decades.
According to a new study published in the journal Nature Sustainability, the number of people living under extreme heat conditions will more than double by 2050 if current global warming trends continue. Currently 1.54 billion people, almost a quarter of the world’s population in 2010 live under extreme heat conditions for part of the year. That is expected to climb to 3.79 billion, 41% of the projected world population in 2050.
The tropics and Southern hemisphere will be the worst affected region by rising heat. Desperate climate refugees will defy immigration barriers and travel north into the United States and Western Europe by land and across oceans from India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, Central America, Southeast Asia, and Brazil. No wall will be high enough to keep them out.
This is the fourth in a series of recent Daily Kos posts on climate change.
1.Climate Change is Not Just Happening Far Away
2. Siberia’s Explosive Methane Farts
3. Climate Warning: The Winters of 1739-1749 and 1740-1741
