Last week, President Donald Trump cemented his standing as the greatest environmental criminal among world leaders, a mantle of which he couldn’t be prouder.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially became the Environmental Pollution Agency. The EPA was established in 1970 to protect human health and the environment. Under Trump stooge Lee Zeldin, its mission today is to endanger human health and devastate the environment.
The EPA has overturned its long-held position that greenhouse gas pollution poses a danger to human health and thus requires regulation.
Gosh. It turns out that since 2009, the EPA had it all wrong. Greenhouse gas emissions actually never hurt anyone and require no federal regulation.
In reality, for more than half a century, scientists have provided irrefutable evidence of man-made climate change caused by burning fossil fuels, and its adverse impact on humans. The EPA’s change in position is pure bunk, laying the treacherous groundwork for Trump to end all federal greenhouse gas regulation and increase oil and coal production.
As to the EPA’s claim that greenhouse gas pollution poses no danger to human health, perhaps it overlooked the 178,000 people who died worldwide in the 2023 heatwave, 54 percent – or 96,120 – such deaths attributable to human-induced climate change.
Perhaps it scrubbed the EPA files of the 4,000 Americans who died as a result of extreme heat from 2010 to 2020, a 53 percent increase in deaths from 2000 to 2009 due to ever-increasing temperatures caused by climate change.
In a recent speech at the White House, Trump proudly announced “the single largest deregulatory action in American history,” including repealing all federal greenhouse gas emission standards for gas-fueled vehicles and engines. Trump also ordered that the Pentagon purchase large amounts of “beautiful, clean coal” — a laughable oxymoron even by Trump’s standards.
The US is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, behind China. China has significantly reduced its reliance on coal, using clean-energy sources for more than 50 percent of electricity generation.
Trump has gutted clean-energy programs and encouraged greater reliance on fossil fuels, shamelessly increasing the US carbon footprint at an incalculable human cost.
Greenhouse gases released in the next decade as a result of Trump’s policies are expected to lead to 1.3 million more temperature-related deaths worldwide by 2115. The Environmental Protection Network (EPN) concluded that Trump’s EPA rollback of environmental regulations will lead to nearly 200,000 deaths by 2050.
The Environmental Defense Fund estimates that the EPA repeal of the 2009 “endangerment finding” regarding climate change could cause up to 58,000 deaths and 37 million additional asthma attacks through 2055 due to increased pollution. The federal repeal of climate pollution controls on vehicles and power plants could lead to 184,000 deaths over time.
From these multiple studies on the impact of Trump’s deregulation policies, one thing is clear. The human cost of Trump doing everything possible to make climate change worse is staggering, his crime against humanity beyond reprehensible.
How could one man contribute to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, present and future, and not be held accountable? How could Trump care more about enhancing his sordid relationship with Big Oil and burnishing his anti-climate-change credentials with the MAGA crowd than about the horrendous human suffering he is causing?
The answer is Trump doesn’t care how many people die. During his first presidency, Trump’s irresponsible, dismissive, anti-science response to the COVID-19 pandemic led to the unnecessary deaths of more than 100,000 people, with Americans dying at a much higher rate than in other countries.
Trump took no responsibility, shed no tears, and said callously of the huge death toll, “It is what it is.”
Trump also doesn’t care that his criminal response to climate change is completely at odds with the vast majority of Americans, 72 percent of whom believe climate change is a serious problem. Authoritarians have absolutely no interest in carrying out the will of the people unless it furthers their own destructive agenda.
Trump also doesn’t care what effect his climate change-worsening policies have on future generations of Americans or the environmental health of the planet. He could leave office in 2028 with the lasting legacy of creating an environmental Armageddon with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders.
If a Democratically controlled Congress is elected in November, it could help prevent Trump from doing even further harm. By using aggressive oversight, budgetary pressure, and litigation, Congress could test the legality of Trump’s “arbitrary and capricious” environmental regulatory rollbacks and block funding for any future deregulations or fossil fuel-friendly policies. Legislatively, it could send critical climate-change bills to the White House that Trump would surely veto, frustrating and angering a majority of Americans and mobilizing voters for the 2028 election.
States also must continue to take the lead by reducing greenhouse gas emissions through clean-energy policies, using every means possible to repulse Trump’s attempts to scuttle such plans.
Individually, Americans can reduce their carbon footprint by buying electric vehicles, installing solar panels, weatherizing homes, reducing food waste, replacing gas furnaces or water heaters with electric heat pumps, and practicing the 3 R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Trump’s assault on the environment is an assault on the welfare of every American present and future. On Nov. 3, Americans can send a clarion message that we will fight Trump tooth and nail, so that our children and grandchildren won’t be left with an increasingly unlivable environment.
For the 72 percent of Americans who consider climate change a serious problem, our actions must speak louder than our words.
- Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor.
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