Donald Trump officially stepped into presidential office Jan. 20, and, with it, the White House’s official website received multiple updates, including a complete revamp of the “Issues” section. Links to news on science and all mention of climate change, which took up several pages before, were removed as well.
Arguably the most controversial aspect is the America First Energy Plan. It says that “President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.” The stated goal is to take advantage of $50 trillion worth of untapped shale, natural gas and oil and to use the revenue to fix our infrastructure.
A professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder says this number is “a huge mischaracterization.” The plan implies that this is the best way to end our energy dependence on other nations, despite the large growth of jobs from renewable energy. It also states that the Trump Administration is “committed to clean coal technology.” In support of this plan, Trump signed off on both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines even after a recent Iowa diesel pipeline spill of 138,000 gallons of diesel fuel. This plan leaves out crucial details, such as how this will be done or the possible impacts from these decisions.
According to National Geographic, coal represents the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, producing nearly 40 percent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Environmentalists say clean coal is a myth, because carbon capture and storage is an extremely expensive and inefficient process that takes up many acres of land.
At the Mountaineer Power Plant in West Virginia, the first national attempt at making any coal power plant produce lower emissions through carbon capture and storage was a project that cost over $100 million dollars. I calculated that this project was only able to capture and store one to three percent of CO2 from 7.2 million metric tons of CO2 emissions during the year it was operational. This suggests that we do not currently have the technology to make “clean coal” a reality.
According to Bloomberg, in 2016 there were 100,000 jobs in wind energy in the United States. The solar industry has produced over 200,000 jobs in the last decade alone. The coal industry has been rapidly declining for years, which has reduced their workforce to around 68,000. Add this to the fact that China plans to produce 20 million jobs in renewable energy before 2020, and it would seem that investing in these jobs would be wiser.
These past few weeks the EPA has had a large amount of pressure against them. Shortly after becoming president, Trump instituted a “media blackout,” which barred EPA officials from speaking to the public. Vanity Fair reported that the White House has ordered the EPA to remove their climate change webpage. On the same day, the Guardian reported that all future data must undergo a review by “political appointees” before being released to the public.
According to the Guardian, Trump is the only current national leader to reject climate change. Even Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Kim Jong-un of North Korea have made statements accepting humanity’s role. Whether or not climate change is caused by humans, developed countries such as the United States are the only countries who can actually afford to transition to renewable energy by investing in the appropriate technologies. Others simply do not have the means to do so on their own.
Environmental rhetoric has caused many officials around the world to become concerned. France’s former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy stated that if the United States were to leave the Paris Agreement he would “demand that Europe put in place a carbon tax” of one to three percent for all products coming from the United States.
The United States joined the Paris Agreement in order to influence the other highest polluters, China and India, to join. If we backed out of this agreement, China and India would have less incentive to stay in. However, Fox News recently reported that Myron Ebell, Trump’s EPA transition leader, said he expects the United States to back out of the Paris Agreement within “days.” Last year, Barack Obama said, “What makes climate change difficult is that it is not an instantaneous catastrophic event … It’s a slow-moving issue that, on a day-to-day basis, people don’t experience and don’t see.”
Out of concern for our planet, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into legislature a bill that requires their state to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below the levels of 1990 before the year 2030. Meanwhile, Wyoming is proposing to place fines on companies that use solar or wind instead of fossil fuels. Reuters recently reported that Republicans have repealed a law that helped keep pollutants from coal mining out of surrounding streams. Ending environmental regulations such as these will inevitably slow down and possibly reverse the progress we have made. The reversal of the effect that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had on the environment is an example of the length of time it takes to make this progress.
In 1987, the Montreal Protocol was signed, which banned all future use of CFCs. An article in the journal Science last year elaborated on how effective the ban has been. While there is proof it has been effective, it took us 30 years to get to this point. But Trump has also stated that innovation in the field of science does not require long-term investments. A group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took data during the month of September for 15 years in a row and determined that the ozone hole has shrunk by more than four million square kilometers, which equates to about half the area of the contiguous United States, since the year 2000 when the ozone was depleting at peak levels.
In an interview with the New York Times, Trump was asked if he thought human activity had a connection with climate. He responded, “I think right now … well, I think there is some connectivity. There is some, something. It depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies. You have to understand, our companies are noncompetitive right now.”
I believe that life changing decisions on climate change should not be mandated purely off of making a profit. What will these actions mean for our country and its influence on the world? Concerned scientists are organizing a “March for Science” that is scheduled for this coming Earth Day, April 22, in Washington D.C.