I haven’t published much since the November 2024 election, mostly because I don’t know what to write about. I feel like I’m at a loss and am grieving. Like all hope is lost.
I feel like the climate crisis fight is over.
I feel like there’s nothing more to say. Half of us voted against the climate crisis and environmental issues and endangered species. The half of us who care about our environment lost the election.
I have cried and I am sad. I want to hug a tree and save the polar bears and protect the sea turtles.
The Climate is not Political
I am angry. I hate politics and I hate money – though don’t misunderstand, I know we need politics in a democracy and we need money to survive. I just wish ethics ruled and money didn’t.
I can’t remain politically neutral anymore, mainly because the climate crisis and environmentalism have become left-aligned. These are NOT POLITICAL ISSUES though, and they never should have been. I am angry with those politicians who made it a political issue.
Humans will suffer with rising sea levels and the coral reefs will die out. Rainforests, which are like the Earth’s lungs, will perish. Human activity and climate change are killing off our species at an extremely high rate. And we’re next, as we endanger our own existence and that of our children.
These issues are actually SURVIVAL issues. We cannot survive without a specific climate, plant and animal biodiversity, or clean air, water, and soil.
Photo by Ivan Radic on Flickr, Creative Commons license (CC BY 2.0).
The Election
The election happened. Trump, the Republican right, and their allies won the presidency, the Senate, the House, and they have the Supreme Court too. They’ve been telling us what they want to do all along, even publishing their plans in a manifesto called Project 2025. They fully plan to trash any plans related to improving the environment or curbing the climate crisis. They’ve been clear about this.
“To say that you’re going to increase fossil fuel production and then to turn around and promise people clean air and clean water is clueless.” -Ben Jealous, Executive Director of the Sierra Club1
New Leaders
The people Trump is choosing for his cabinet are often unqualified and anti-environment. For example, Chris Wright, a fracking magnate, is the confirmed U.S. Energy Secretary. He makes a moral case for fossil fuels! He explained that “the world’s poorest people need oil, gas and coal to realize the benefits of modern life that Americans and others in rich nations take for granted. Only fossil fuels, he says, can bring prosperity to millions who still burn wood, dung or charcoal for basic needs like cooking food and heating homes.”2
Lee Zeldin is confirmed as the leader of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where he will dismantle environmental regulations and reduce the EPA itself, per Project 2025. Zeldin has little experience in environmentalism and has taken money from fossil fuel companies. Environmental regulations seem doomed. “He is expected to work to erase rules to fight climate change and chemical pollution, while shutting down programs designed to help poor and minority communities that are disproportionately affected by pollution.”3
There are dozens of federal agencies being shuttered or at risk of being closed. Federal employees have already been furloughed or laid off entirely. The Trump administration has warned more than 1,100 Environmental Protection Agency employees that they could be fired at any time. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) might be on the chopping block next.
The Climate Crisis is about to get a whole lot worse
Photo by Maria Lupan on Unsplash.
“We’re going to drill, baby, drill.” -Donald J. Trump4
Climate change is no hoax. A warmer climate is causing stronger storms and worse natural disasters. This is causing human suffering across the planet. As Lisa Friedman recently wrote in the New York Times, “On the heels of the hottest year in recorded history, one that brought the planet to a dangerous temperature threshold, President Trump effectively told the world on [January 20] that the United States is out of the climate fight.”5 Trump is withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement. He wants to curb the expansion of renewable energy efforts, expand oil drilling, and end federal regulation of dangerous emissions from fossil fuels.
This is after global temperatures reached record highs last year in 2024. We have surpassed the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels that scientists warned us against. They indicate that “every fraction of a degree of warming above that level brings greater risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.”6
“Mr. Trump ordered the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement on global warming for a second time. He initiated plans to open vast areas of public land and federal waters, including fragile wilderness in Alaska, for oil drilling and mining. He ordered the elimination of government offices and programs aimed at protecting poor communities from pollution. And he said he would repeal regulations aimed at promoting electric vehicles and would halt approvals of new wind farms in federal waters.” –New York Times7
The glaciers are melting. Scientists studying the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica discovered that it is “melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse…Thwaites holds enough water to increase sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts like a cork, holding back the vast Antarctic ice sheet, its collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise, devastating coastal communities from Miami and London to Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands.”8 Countries like Vanuatu have already experienced sea level rise and had to relocate an entire village because of it.
Worse, without United States leadership on the climate crisis, other countries are less likely to put forth efforts to curb the crisis.
The Climate Crisis is Creating an Insurance Crisis
Parts of the Los Angeles area burned to the ground and the Trump administration and Congress can’t agree on distributing aid to the thousands who lost everything. In fact, they want to shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Some of the people in California lost their homeowners insurance before the crisis! Increasingly, insurance is getting more difficult to obtain and more expensive. This is a direct result of climate change. “As climate-fueled disasters get worse, home insurance is becoming a money-losing business in more of the country. Without insurance, you can’t get a mortgage; without a mortgage, most Americans can’t buy a home.”9 Perhaps the elites want everyone to be renters, ensuring we remain dependent on them.
“Nationally, over the past decade, insurers paid out more in claims than they received in premiums, and, since 2018, more than 1.9 million home insurance contracts nationwide have been dropped.”10
Photo by Ross Stone on Unsplash.
Where do we go from here?
Everything might get worse before it gets better, especially for the environment. Changes to the Constitution could hurt our economy or even lead to war.
Are we transitioning to an oligarchy? Wealthy elites and billionaires are calling the shots. Forbes reported that at least 26 billionaires donated to Trump’s campaign. The main industries among these backers are casinos, finance, and oil and gas. What is their number one priority? Money. Not climate or trees or polar bears or humanitarian causes or philanthropy. One, in particular, wants to figure out how to live on Mars. Why don’t we just protect the beautiful planet and life we already have?
I wish he’d go to Mars. We don’t want him on Earth!
These billionaires support Trump due to money and greed, not because they believe he will do the right thing.
Because everyone knows Trump won’t do the right thing.
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash.
I’m here to tell you that we should not despair. There are so many of us who feel powerless and alone. But we aren’t alone. We need to come together, unite, and stand up. We can’t give up, and we can’t keep quiet. We must object, call on our representatives, and protest.
What other choice do we have?
UPDATE February 10, 2025:
Trump is planning to sign an executive order to end a Biden administration plan that would have phased out plastic straws and switched to paper straws within the federal government. “Back to plastic,” he says, regarding the straws. As the New York Times explained, “The U.S. government is considered the world’s biggest buyer of consumer goods, and its planned shift away from plastic had been considered a significant milestone in a global effort to tackle a plastics pollution crisis.”11 Is this really what we need to spend our time on – reversing a plan to eliminate one single type of plastic? It must be important to the billionaire oil executives who support and donate to Trump, since plastic is made from fossil fuels.
I have mostly stayed away from writing about political issues on my website since I feel that political disagreement takes away from trying to achieve the greater good. But I feel that I can no longer avoid certain issues, especially since pollution and climate change should not be political issues. These are human issues.
In more than one way recently, the Supreme Court has gotten it wrong.
The Case
The Supreme Court recently ruled in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not have the authority to issue broad, aggressive regulations on climate-warming pollution from power plants that might force many of those plants to close or rebuild. It potentially restricts other agencies from passing regulations to protect both the environment and public health.1
“The case was unusual because it focused on a program that wasn’t even in force: the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era federal regulation adopted under the Clean Air Act of 1970, which sought to govern greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.” The Clean Power Plan would have required utilities to move away from coal and toward renewable energy.
After a series of lawsuits from Republican states and the coal industry, the Supreme Court blocked the program in 2016 and it never took effect. “The Biden administration tried to have the case dismissed, arguing that there were no E.P.A. regulations in place for the court to consider. That didn’t work and, in the end, the court favored the plaintiffs…who argued that only Congress should have the power to set rules that significantly affect the American economy.”2
“It was the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming.” -Manuela Andreoni, New York Times3
Photo by Alexei Scutari on Unsplash.
Greenhouse gases
The greenhouse effect is what it sounds like, in that if you have a covered garden, you are purposely trapping the heat inside. The Earth’s atmosphere does the same thing, as natural greenhouse gases trap heat and keep our habitat warm. However, human activities are responsible for unnatural increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last 170 years. This increases the temperature across the planet, hence causing what we call global warming. “The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the United States is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation.” Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas, accounting for nearly 80% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. “The main human activity that emits CO2 is the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil) for energy and transportation.”4
Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The electricity sector is the second-largest source of greenhouse emissions in the United States (after transportation). This accounts for 25% of the U.S.’s emissions. “Approximately 60% of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, mostly coal and natural gas.”5
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading scientific authority on global warming, explains that exceeding a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase would cause climate change’s worst impacts. This means more intense droughts, extreme heat, massive flooding, and the worsening of food shortages, wildfires, and even poverty. It also means the decline of all species. That includes a mass die-off of the world’s coral reefs which actually help regulate the oceans and climate.
Because since the Industrial Revolution, the Earth has already heated 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).
“The failure of the United States — the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in history — to meet its climate targets would very likely mean the world will not be able to keep global warming at about 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. Beyond that threshold, scientists say, the likelihood of catastrophic heat waves, drought, flooding and widespread extinctions increases significantly.”6
Photo by Tobias Rademacher on Unsplash.
Running Out of Time!
We are running out of time to stall massive problems. Once global warming reaches a certain point, it will create a spiral effect. Several articles mentioned how the Supreme Court’s decision will limit “Biden’s plan” or “Biden’s goal” to reduce carbon emissions. But these are not Biden’s goals, nor are they simply goals. Reducing carbon emissions is a requirement! It is a necessary move that the entire globe – every developed nation – must make in order to save the people. We will not survive massive global changes, and we know this. If we want to live and see our grandchildren survive, we must change our ways.
Because we needed to start making these changes 50 years ago.
Reducing carbon emissions should be everyone’s goal, whether they like it or not.
It is not a Republican or Democratic issue.
It’s a human issue.
But the Supreme Court has punted clean air regulations to Congress, and we know that governing body consistently cannot get anything done. Our bipartisan Congress argues and filibusters and achieves nothing.
