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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, June 4, 2017
Anti-Science Trumps Climate Change
A
physicist named William Happer is the leading candidate for science
adviser to the president. He considers climate scientists “like a cult",
and has likened climate science to Nazism and ISIS.
(PORTLAND, Ore.) - True to form, President Trump has pulled the US out
of the Paris accord on climate change, joining Syria and Nicaragua as
the only non-participating states.
He got an earful from the Europeans at the just-concluded G-7 meeting in
Italy, but the US stood aside as the other six countries committed to
fully carrying out the Paris agreement. Trump and most of his colleagues
seem oblivious to the environmental and political costs their decision
entails.
The planet will suffer for their ignorance, as will initiatives in the
US to move rapidly ahead on renewal energy-based technologies and
accompanying employment. The bad news on the environment continues to
mount up. There is the coral reef die-off in the Great Barrier Reef,
disintegration in the West Antarctic ice flow, sea-level rise, and
resumption of major deforestation in the Amazon basin.
2016 was the hottest year on record, and extreme weather events that we
are seeing everywhere are mainly the consequence of carbon buildup in
the atmosphere, especially its impact on Arctic melting.
Another warning sign comes from the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen,
which is home to the Global Seed Vault. The vault, sunk in deep
permafrost, holds about a million food crop seeds. Because of climate
change, flooding threatened the vault, which previously had been
considered impregnable. Fortunately, the vault itself did not yield; but
we may not be so lucky the next time.
I couldn’t help thinking of an apocalyptic scenario in which Earth’s
survivors are reduced to foraging for seeds to stave off mass
starvation. Blame for Trump’s decision should mostly fall on the climate
skeptics he has appointed. Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), is an oil-and-gas man who has a long history of
disparaging scientific findings on climate change and initiating law
suits against the EPA.
He also has a hard time with facts—saying, for instance, that China and
India have no obligations under the Paris Accord until 2030, and that
they are “polluting far more than we are.”
If Pruitt’s wildest dream comes true, the EPA will be eliminated by
December 31, 2018 under H.R. 861. William Happer, the leading candidate
for science adviser to the president, considers climate scientists (he’s
a physicist) “like a cult. It’s like Hare Krishna or something like
that. They’re glassy-eyed and they chant.” (On other occasions he has
likened climate science to Nazism and ISIS.)
And of course there’s the secretary of energy, Rick Perry. No
explanation needed there. What these three have in common besides being
climate-change deniers is their belief that government scientists need
to be muzzled—their public talks, conference papers, and media
appearances should be closely monitored and limited. These appointments
are prelude to a proposed 31 percent cut in the EPA budget that will gut
US science research and the environmental protection bureaucracy. Even
though such an extraordinary cut is unlikely to get Congressional
approval, some significant budget reduction is inevitable, and will have
a more immediate effect on climate change than withdrawal from the
Paris Accord.
A quarter of EPA’s employees and 56 programs are to be eliminated. The
most lasting ill effects of having an anti-science administration may be
on the science education of children at the state level. Two states,
and possibly a third (Florida), have laws on the books that enable
parents to challenge teachers on how they teach evolution and climate
change.
Parents who believe in creationism and deny climate change may not be
able to force local school boards and teachers to dispose of standard
science texts, but they may compel teachers to introduce creationism and
“alternative” explanations of climate change in order to “balance” the
curriculum. Standing against the three blind mice are virtually the
entire climate science community and, most recently, three former
administrators of the EPA. (Within the administration, only Gary Cohn,
Trump’s chief economic adviser, reportedly has argued in favor of the
Paris accord as well as against supporting the coal industry.)
The former administrators served over three decades, and wrote an op-ed
piece the other day to express concern over Trump’s decision on the
Paris Accord.
Saying that Trump “has chosen ignorance over knowledge,” the three took
particular aim at Trump’s proposed budget cuts relevant to global
warming—not just the EPA, but also “programs in the departments of
Energy, State, Interior and Homeland Security, and at the National
Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
NASA . . . The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is zeroed out; air and
energy research are cut by 66 percent.”
The op-ed concludes: “With no seeming clue as to what’s going on, the
president seems to have cast our lot with a small coterie of climate
skeptics and their industry allies rather than trying to better
understand the impact of increased greenhouse-gas emissions into the
atmosphere.” Indeed. Thus does the US descend into global
irresponsibility and surrender of opportunities to lead in the human
interest. The US withdrawal from Paris will not take full effect until
2020, but by then most of the world will have passed us by.
And while our backs are turned, the EU’s climate commissioner, Miguel
Arias CaƱete, announced: “The EU and China are joining forces to forge
ahead on the implementation of the Paris agreement and accelerate the
global transition to clean energy.” If there is a silver lining here, it
is the planned formation of climate-change alliances. One is led by
California and joined by progressive leaders in Oregon, Washington, New
York, Massachusetts, and perhaps some other states.
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is leading another
emission-reduction effort involving coordination among cities,
businesses, and universities. These initiatives are saying “no” to
Washington’s failure of leadership and substituting for it with
legislation that may go beyond the requirements of the Paris Accord.
So we must now turn to our state and local governments for scientific
advances, economic innovation, and political courage if we are to help
save the planet.
_________________________________________
Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University.