By the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board
The impact of a record-breaking, life-threatening heat dome on the U.S. coincided with the worst science denial in the 400 years since the Inquisition made the astronomer Galileo Galilei recant his belief that the Earth orbits the sun.
He would have been burned at the stake for insisting on the truth. Giordano Bruno, a like-minded heretic, already had been just a few years earlier. Nobody’s life but Galileo’s was at stake in his historic clash between religious dogma and scientific fact.
But millions, if not billions, of lives are imperiled today by the Trump administration’s announced intent to revoke the government’s 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which warm the planet, endanger public health.
To erase that fact from the public record is to eliminate the government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from any sources, whether cars or power plants, along with any incentive to encourage solar, wind and nuclear energy and other climate-friendly production methods.
That regulation allows the Environmental Protection Agency to invoke the Clean Air Act to control greenhouse gases.
Where greed is good
Lee Zeldin, President Trump’s agent of destruction at the EPA, cited a report from five climate change skeptics at the Department of Energy who dispute the overwhelming consensus of scientists worldwide.
They were brought in, like Zeldin, to promote Trump’s dogma that government regulation is bad and greed is good.
As a congressman from Long Island, N.Y., Zeldin joined a bipartisan climate change caucus and voted against an amendment to prohibit the EPA from controlling greenhouse gases.
That was then. Now, as Trump’s nominee to run the EPA, he said he would drive “a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion.”
Power and greed are companions in corruption.
The greed of conventional automakers and of the coal, gas and petroleum industries, along with the enormous sums of money they invest in pliable politicians, are the forces driving the war on science that has overtaken state capitals like Florida’s and the U.S. government.
Going to hell, metaphorically
Burning is an appropriate metaphor for humanity’s fate if global temperatures continue to soar.
Heat has been killing more Americans than any other weather phenomena — more than 4,800 over the past two years, the CDC reports. More than 5,000 died in France last year. There are limits to what the human body can bear, and some places are fast approaching those limits.
People in Broward don’t have to ask how hot it got here last week.
The heat index — what it actually feels like — topped 100. Across the state, Tampa recorded its first-ever reading of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
On July 28, the nation set a one-day record for electrical consumption, driven by demand for air-conditioning (which merely transfers heat from one place to another).
Heat death statistics, usually undercounted, don’t reflect how a hotter climate is also killing people through heavier and more frequent floods and wildfires that cost the economy trillions of dollars over time in damage to homes, businesses, public infrastructure and agricultural crops.
Are anyone’s short-term profits worth such an enormous price?
Zeldin chose a truck dealership in Indianapolis to boast that the EPA’s proposal “would, if finalized, amount to the largest deregulation action in the history of the United States.”
Also the most reckless and indefensible.
The United States seems to be the only major nation that’s in the grip of such mercenary and selfish dogma. Most other national leaders take climate change as an existential threat to humanity, which it is.
It’s one reason why China, which pumps the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, is also making itself a world leader in the electric vehicles for which the U.S. is now canceling incentives.
The United States is the second-largest greenhouse gas polluter. Without our participation, it is inconceivable that the nations that still respect science will be able to meet the goal, to which the U.S. once subscribed, of preventing average global temperatures from rising more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.
Because the 2009 declaration is a regulation, Zeldin can’t just pronounce it dead. He has to publish the repeal in the Federal Register and accept public comments before putting it into effect. Litigation is certain and emphatically called for. Everyone is entitled to comment. Everyone should.
“Today’s EPA announcement,” said former Vice President Al Gore, a pioneer in defending the planet, “ignores the blindingly obvious reality of the climate crisis and sidelines the EPA’s own scientists and lawyers in favor of the interests and profits of the fossil fuel industry.”
It’s easier to comprehend their short-term greed than to understand why they don’t seem to care that their children and grandchildren will inherit the unlivable planet they’re making of the only home of the human race.
This opinion piece was originally published by the Sun Sentinel, which is a media partner of The Invading Sea. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. Banner photo: The sun rises as a power plant emits smoke near St. Petersburg (iStock image).
Sign up for The Invading Sea newsletter by visiting here. To support The Invading Sea, click here to make a donation. If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece to The Invading Sea, email Editor Nathan Crabbe at nc*****@*au.edu. To learn more about the heat index, watch the video below.
