Victor Korniyenko
Global Climate Change
On October 9, Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt moved as expected to rescind the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan, arguing that it represented federal overreach, would overburden industry, and cost jobs—especially coal industry jobs. Pruitt, in taking this action, declared that “the war on coal is over.”
But an EPA analysis of the Clean Power Plan, which requires U.S. power plants to cut fossil fuel emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, found it would have done other things, like avert up to 3,600 premature deaths each year and save up to $34 billion in health costs.
Former EPA head Carol Browner described Pruitt’s move as a “giveaway to polluters.” She called the decision “especially cynical, coming as wildfires devastate the West and in the wake of four disastrous hurricanes that have battered the Gulf Coast from Texas to Tampa—causing billions in damage and taking lives.”
But for Pruitt, it is just par for the course. As Attorney General for Oklahoma, he launched multiple lawsuits against federal environmental regulations—including several against the Clean Power Plan—complaining that they constitute costly federal overreach.
And since moving into his EPA office in February, Pruitt has underscored his commitment to climate-change denial. This happened even as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the Department of Commerce, tracked the most active Atlantic hurricane season in memory, on the verge of breaking a 124-year record. Scientists reported on how warmer ocean temperatures aided Irma in becoming an 80-mile-wide tornado, and turned Harvey into a self-perpetuating rain machine. We read the word “unprecedented” an unprecedented number of times.
And recent news revealed how climate warming is affecting tiny things too, causing microbes in the Earth's soil to release significantly more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Warming encourages massive aquatic-life-threatening and ice-melting algae blooms, and threatens parasites that undergird food webs. Rising Co2 levels may actually be diluting the protein content of our food.
Watching the Trump Administration wrecking ball swing against efforts to understand and respond to climate change, one wonders how we will prepare for the vast magnitude and diversity of environmental change coming at us.
There’s a general downsizing of federal environmental agencies: As the journal Nature laid out in March, the Trump Administration budget cut spending on climate research, specifically targeting missions allowing NASA to monitor carbon dioxide concentrations and other indicators of climate in the atmosphere. The Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee in July approved a spending bill for the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and related agencies, giving them more than $800 million less than in fiscal 2017.
“We’re not spending money on [climate research] any more,” boasted Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director. “We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.”
The Trump Administration shuttered the EPA’s climate webpage and forbade EPA and Department of Agriculture employees from discussing climate change. It is considering weakening greenhouse gas standards for passenger cars and commercial trucks, and has otherwise made clear its support for oil and gas industries: rescinding the Clean Power Plan and rolling out welcome mats on federal lands to fossil-fuel interests by shrinking national monuments and opening up drilling in the Alaska Native Wildlife Refuge.
The administration is also refusing to release a federal report mandated by law, the National Climate Assessment, which confirms a raft of climatic shifts and serious consequences. (A draft of the report has been awaiting approval for months.) Along with Scott Pruitt, a number of Trump Administration appointees question both the basic science connecting human carbon emissions and climate change, as well as the role of government in regulating industries that pollute.
If there is any silver glinting through the rising dust clouds following this wrecking ball, it is that there are still plenty of people in government determined to defend our ability to research and understand climate change—and to develop forward-looking strategies to respond.
Steve Falk of the Citizens Climate Lobby, which has focused for almost a decade on passing carbon fee and dividend legislation, actually says he’s feeling optimistic. His group works closely with the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, which adds Democrats and Republicans in pairs, and has just reached 60 members. The caucus succeeded in voting down an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have scrapped a requirement to study the impact of climate change on U.S. military installations.
Although the caucus has not always presented a united front on climate issues, such as oil drilling on federal lands, Falk thinks bipartisan support is building. He told The Progressive: “In the past, when any legislation has come up, all the lobbying and action was taking place inside the beltway with a lot of insider baseball, so less attention was paid to support at the grassroots level. We’re training ordinary folks to talk to congressmen and generate media, write letters. And that is encouraging bipartisan dialog.”
If there’s any silver lining in the dust clouds following this wrecking ball, it’s that there’s still people in government determined to defend climate change research.
The group is now focused on securing the reauthorization of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which supports the research and development of energy technologies responsive to climate change.
The Pentagon, despite Trump’s executive orders to stop, continues to undertake climate change planning, the Military Times reports. With ship dry docks and military bases experiencing increased flooding, and early warning coastal installations failing due to a combination of melting sea ice, thawing permafrost and sea-level rise, the very mission of the Department of Defense requires that it pursue climate change research and development despite directives from the White House.
At the state level, California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed bills sending almost $1.5 billion of its cap-and-trade auction revenues to climate change programs, aimed at promoting clean vehicles and helping the state’s agriculture reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And lawmakers in Alaska, which is experiencing dramatic temperature shifts, have appointed a state senior climate change adviser.
There is also pushback from individual federal workers. Joel Clement, a former senior policy adviser at the Interior Department, has filed a whistleblower complaint against the Trump Administration for reassigning him to a lesser position for speaking out about the dangers of climate change for Alaskan communities.
As government support for scientific research continues to decline, the private sector is stepping up. Private sources are helping feed climate technology research centers like the Columbia University’s Center for Climate and Life and Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Of course, private science funded some of the earliest discoveries about climate change, which was then covered up. Among the early researchers were those hired by ExxonMobil—which suppressed the research and launched a decades-long denial campaign.
Addressing the problem of climate change requires research that is not defined by short-term profits. This has long been a critical role for federal dollars, now under siege. Let’s hope that in the near future, cooler heads prevail.