People around the world will celebrate Earth Day in many different ways tomorrow. This year's theme is "Our Power, Our Planet," a push to triple the world's use of clean energy by 2030. Organizers have created an interactive map with the details of hundreds of celebrations across the planet.
President Trump, always the contrarian, is celebrating in his own way. He began in January, as soon as he reassumed the presidency. He has been busy, too, implementing comprehensive policies to make the planet warmer, its weather more violent, its biodiversity less robust, and its human population much less safe.
Some Americans, especially the captains of the fossil fuel industry, are delighted. Everyone else should be concerned.
As we know, Trump and his team are committed to improving government efficiency. During his first term, the Trump administration rescinded more than 125 federal environmental rules and programs. It was very inefficient; they did it one rule at a time. This time, Trump is doing it all at once. He's putting a five-year sunset date on many regulations related to energy production. They all would disappear at once unless some are extended.
Trump and his wingman Elon Musk have inserted a new verb in the government lexicon. Their Department of Government Efficiency is DOGE-ing thousands of federal employees, programs and departments. Unfortunately, many DOGE cuts allow the government to dodge its responsibility for environmental stewardship on behalf of current and future Americans.
The president is celebrating Earth Day in several other ways, too. In an impressive example of multi-tasking, he is curtailing federal climate science, defunding programs to help America track its weather, rescinding federal clean energy grants, and banning over 250 unacceptable words from federal literature and websites. They include clean energy, climate crisis, climate science, pollution, science-based, social justice and vulnerable populations.
Earlier this month, Trump issued an order to "reinvigorate America's beautiful clean coal industry," which simultaneously recognizes Easter and Earth Day with Trump trying to resurrect the world's most carbon-intensive fuel from the dead.
Trump pulled America out of the Paris climate agreement during his first term. Former President Biden put us back in. In one of the first acts of his new term, Trump announced he is pulling us out again. The first time, many states filled the gap with their own emission-reduction plans. At least 23 states and the District of Columbia now have economywide targets to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.
So, in a case of geographic and political overreach, Trump issued an order on April 9 to block states from enforcing their laws to combat global warming. He also directed his attorney general to block state environmental justice and environmental, social, and governance policies. Yet state policies like these are none of a president's business.
As I wrote last week, Trump is acquiring extraordinary presidential powers by declaring national emergencies where there are none. His energy emergency declaration is one. However, he still flatly denies America's most serious genuine emergency: climate change. Worse, he is actively exacerbating it with his promotion of fossil fuels.
When nearly 200 nations, including the U.S., signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, the preferred goal was to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. Scientists now predict that the Earth's average surface temperature may climb 3 degrees Celsius in the lifetimes of children born today.
The World Resources Institute calculates that 3 degrees would expose nearly 600 million people to floods from rising sea levels, cut global food production in half, cause disastrous losses of wildlife habitat, create month-long heat waves in cities, lead to skyrocketing demand for air conditioning, result in more insect-borne diseases, and cause the greatest hardships for those with the fewest resources to cope.
Kevin Trenberth, a leading climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, moved to New Zealand rather than work under Trump. He expects a "significant number" of other American researchers are likely to leave, and says Trump's latest decision to exit the Paris Agreement is a serious setback.
"The U.S. cannot opt out without major consequences," he warns. "If the U.S. does not lead by example, and there is a moral and ethical responsibility to do so as the largest accumulated emitter, then why should anyone else go along?"
The agreement survived last time. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres believes it will again, but not without loss. "People sometimes can lose important organs or the legs and survive," he said. "But we don't want a crippled Paris Agreement. We want a real Paris Agreement."
In a poll last month, EcoAmerica found that more than half of Americans oppose Trump's reversal of America's climate leadership. "The majority are concerned about climate change, with younger Republicans breaking ranks with their party's older generation on climate concern," the poll found. "The survey also reveals that Americans—including Republicans under 45—see the new administration's rollbacks as threats to jobs, public health, the environment, and U.S. leadership in clean energy."
But Trump and other Republican leaders will not deal with climate change unless voters force them to. If that were to happen, the world would really have reason to celebrate.
William S. Becker is a former U.S. Department of Energy central regional director and special assistant to the department’s assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy. He is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.
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