It seems as though every month or so I find myself writing another article on the incompetence of President Donald Trump’s administration in regards to the environment. There is always a new rollback, some new legislation or a new denial about climate change coming from Washington — and it gets scarier every time.
I will admit, I am not a star citizen when it comes to being as Earth-friendly as possible. I try to recycle and compost what I can, I keep my showers short and I carpool with friends. But I also still drive a car that runs on gas, use plastic materials and eat meat.
The fact that matters is that I try, and I can see my eco-friendly mistakes. That is the difference between me and the Trump administration. They are completely unapologetic when it comes to their anti-environmental policies.
They are so unapologetic that they are preparing to establish a “panel” that will examine whether climate change affects national security. Studies published in peer-reviewed journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree that climate change that has occurred within the last century is extremely likely to have been caused by human activities.
Yet President Trump thinks his own panel will come up with better results.
The memo that announced this new 12-person committee also said that scientific studies of climate change “have not undergone a rigorous independent and adversarial peer review to examine the certainties and uncertainties of climate science, as well as implications for national security.”
Essentially, this panel is just the Trump Administration’s way of scrapping together as many climate change deniers as they can to create a very skewed report in order to further deny the science of global warming.
William Happer, a professor of physics at Princeton University who has been cited as a lead member of this committee, is notorious for once claiming that the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is beneficial to humanity. Just by taking an AP environmental science class, I learned how harmful carbon dioxide is.
Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases that traps heat in the atmosphere and does not allow the heat to escape into space, thus warming the surface of the Earth. Additionally, the use of carbon dioxide has increased so much since the Industrial Revolution that atmospheric concentration has increased by more than a third, according to NASA.
This has caused a multitude of consequences, such as the melting of the ice caps, destruction of arctic habitats and creation of stronger storm systems to name a few. All of this is scientifically proven and widely accepted by scientists.
While some may differ in opinion on the details of global warming, it is pretty basic, agreed upon knowledge that humans have added so much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere that it is adversely affecting the planet.
Therefore, it is extremely concerning that a man who refuses to believe all of these basic facts will be added to a panel that could decide the path the United States will take on dealing with climate change and eventually saving the planet.
I will never understand the reasoning behind denying climate change. Besides allowing some people to live in ignorance, what does it accomplish? Finding and investing in renewable energy sources would be more beneficial in the long run, allowing America to be more independent from the ebbs and flows of the oil and natural gas industries.
If the idea is to save money by not having all of the regulations and rules, it is not going to matter much when cities are flooding from the melting ice caps and environmental refugees are stranded all over the world.
The economy is not going to be such a big deal anymore when there is no planet left to live on.
