Self-Destruction Through Ignorance

If you’ve lived through any of the recent mega-storms, wildfires, coastal erosion, droughts, unexpected flooding, polar vortex or sweltering summer days, you probably have a visceral understanding of global warming. If you know anyone looking to return to a job mining coal, you are probably also aware that more coal mines have shut down during the initial Trump presidency than any comparable period during the Obama years. Coal is unwelcome as a viable fuel source these days. And you are probably equally aware of our incumbent government’s rejection of responsibility in connection with that climate change, pulling out of the almost-universally-accepted Paris climate accord and reducing or eliminating regulations intended to reduce greenhouse emissions and punish those major polluters fouling our air and waterways.

You know our average climate is hotter, rather dramatically correlated, lock-step, with the rise of industrial and other man-caused greenhouse gasses. The last four years have been the hottest in recorded human history. “Scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Wednesday announced that global temperatures in 2018 were the fourth hottest on record in the last 139 years.

“From 1981 onward, the average increase in global temperature doubled from 0.13 degrees Fahrenheit (0.07 degrees Celsius) per decade since 1880, to 0.31 degrees Fahrenheit / 0.17 degrees Celsius, with the hottest four years to date recorded as 2016, 2017, 2015, and 2018, according to the analysis…, ‘The five warmest years have, in fact, been the last five years’ said Gavin A. Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the New York Times reports.

“Last year also marked the 42nd consecutive year of global land and ocean temperatures rising above the 20th century average, with nine of the 10 warmest years on record occurring since 2005, the analysis found.

“The World Meteorological Organization announced similar findings Wednesday [2/6]. ‘The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years. The degree of warming during the past four years has been exceptional, both on land and in the ocean,’ Petteri Taalas, the secretary general of the WMO, told The Guardian.” Yahoo/Fortune, February 6^th.  Increasingly, voters are recognizing that man-induced climate change is not only real but incredibly damaging as the accelerating parade of related natural disasters will attest.

Continuing into the present day, the official policy of both the Trump administration and the Republican Party is to prioritize old-world business profits over even the most dangerous health and environmental threats. I say “old-world,” because the industries and related jobs, both actual and potential, that are or could be generated by a new generation of environmentally-directed corporate businesses will easy eclipse the most polluting job sectors in our economy. It’s just that people fight harder to keep what they already have versus taking advantage of new opportunities that require significant operational changes. Even if those changes are both necessary and inevitable.

Nothing screams this malignant approach to change like the enforcement policies of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency. The statistics say it all. “Numbers released by the Trump administration Friday show an 80% drop in some penalties levied against polluters, the latest sign that the Environmental Protection Agency has become a less aggressive watchdog.

“Injunctive relief — the amount of money polluters commit to pay to correct problems and prevent them from reoccurring — fell from $20.6 billion in fiscal 2017 to $3.95 billion in fiscal 2018. That represents a 15-year low for the agency… Civil penalties in 2018 declined to $69 million. That was far less than the $1.68 billion in 2017, but that year’s figure was affected by fines negotiated during the Obama administration.

Volkswagen agreed in 2016 to a $1.45-billion penalty as punishment for its diesel emissions scandal… In releasing the figures, EPA officials said they were focused in 2018 on ensuring that facilities were in compliance and expediting site cleanup.

“‘A strong enforcement and compliance assurance program is essential to achieving positive public health and environmental outcomes,’ Susan Bodine, assistant administrator of the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, said in a statement… The EPA’s data span fiscal year 2018, which ended Sept. 30. For the most part, the figures reflect enforcement activity — cases that were settled, fines that were assessed — that took place under the Trump administration.

“Civil penalties are at their lowest since 1994, when the enforcement office was created, said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for the EPA’s enforcement office during the Obama administration… Last month, the Department of Justice released numbers showing that the EPA had hit a 30-year low in 2018 in the number of pollution cases it referred for criminal prosecution.” Los Angeles Times, February 9^th. These practices make a mockery of any semblance of the mandate of the EPA, created by Republican Richard Nixon in 1970, and suggest the blind hypocrisy of the word “Protection” in that agency’s name and the image of plant life in its logo. There is no excuse. There is no justification.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and the infamy of the Trump administration’s lackadaisical approach to serious environmental issues will be seared both into the history books and into the lives of the future generations whose lives will be decimated by this callous disregard of environmental consequences.