 |
| Visuals@visuals |
Let’s start with one basic hypothesis:
Global Warming is an immediate threat to America.
Donald Trump does not believe in Global Warming.
Thus, Donald Trump is an immediate threat to America.
Period. Drop the vote in the ballot box. In case one needs to be reminded of Mr. Trump’s positions on global warming, in 2013 he called it a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. As for his more nuanced comments, “Trump, despite his talk about clean air, has given no indication at all that he’s particularly interested in giving much weight to any consideration besides jobs and profit margins. Every time his administration rolls back another set of rules or regulations, the framing is the same: It’s important for the economy,” the Washington Post reported on Jan. 9th 2020 by Phillip Bump.
Bump went on to explain what Trump’s idea of the environment really equates to, “Under President Barack Obama, that mandate had been expanded to include new attention to the effects on climate change. Trump, while claiming to be an environmentalist, wants to loosen environmental rules similar to those which, in another context, he used to tout his own environmentalism.”
“If the Trump administration is confined to four years, basically every single thing that happened during the Obama administration can be protected,”
Now for some ah-ha moments. First, “Massachusetts vs. Environmental Protection Agency was decided in a 5 to 4 ruling in 2007. It laid the groundwork for many of former President Obama’s climate policies, including the Clean Power Plan,” according to Richard Lazarus, author of a new book about the case called, The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court.
Second, due to this key decision, the Obama administration put into place environmental regulations that have mitigated the hazards of man-made elements that are warming the planet. However, President Trump has undone some those rules through Executive Action. But these actions can be reversed with little major impact if Trump has only one term.
Five years from now, the damage will only become more catastrophic. On NPR of March 9th, 2020, Richard Lazarus explains, “If the Trump administration is confined to four years, basically every single thing that happened during the Obama administration can be protected,” Lazarus says. “If there’s another four years, it will be much harder, protect all those regulations, all those rules, and harder to protect the Paris Agreement.”
Which brings us to the Paris Agreement. It is still in force today. It does not ‘term out’ until after this election. Electing a Democrat is critical since even one of the most prominent Republicans admits that global warming just does not seem to register to his fellow Republicans as Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens explained to Lazarus: “What Justice Stevens told me was this was a really important case to him,” Lazarus says. “He could not understand why so many people, including so many Republicans, and he was a Republican, didn’t understand the seriousness of climate change. He wanted to make a statement.” This was in 2007….
But recent studies confirm the stubborn Republican view of global warming and the change in climate. The New York Times in 2017 reported the results of major studies, “Fewer than a third of registered Republicans nationwide say that climate change is caused mostly by human activities, while nearly half say it’s mostly due to “natural changes in the environment,” according to the study, which looked at eight years of opinion data and mapped the results by congressional district. ‘Being skeptical about global warming has become part of Republican or conservative identity,’ said Riley E. Dunlap, a professor of environmental sociology at Oklahoma State University who was not involved in the study.[“How Republicans Think About Climate Change” Nadia Popovich12/14/2017]
“He could not understand why so many people, including so many Republicans, and he was a Republican, didn’t understand the seriousness of climate change.
So that’s that. If you are a Republican voter and you believe that global warming is a serious threat that is not ‘trendy’ then you are in the minority in your party. And if so, you owe it to yourself and your descendants to vote for a Democrat for our next American President even if that person has programs that you don’t cotton to. Why? The Earth Trumps Trump. It is very clear.
Other issues pale by comparison. Abortion: we can debate it out. Civil Rights: let’s keep making progress. Guns: how about a compromise? Taxes: gosh, I wonder what the economic hit will be when we find coastlines under water? Education: let’s start with learning about our endangered planet. Crime: it will get worse as resources get limited. Immigrants: we may all be moving to high ground. See what I mean?
Let me repeat this sober denouement from Richard Lazarus: “If the Trump administration is confined to four years, basically every single thing that happened during the Obama administration can be protected. If there’s another four years, it will be much harder, protect all those regulations, all those rules, and harder to protect the Paris Agreement.” Without the 197 nations in tow as is in Paris’ Agreement, the world will not have much of a chance.
No pun intended, but with a name like Lazarus, we can only hope to rise up from the dead.
No comments:
Post a Comment