By Basav Sen, Climate Policy Program of the Institute for Policy Studies
Among the flurry of actions by the Trump administration, it could be easy to miss one that poses a grave danger to public health and our planet: a no-holds-barred attack on science.
In a series of disturbing moves, the administration has censored scientific research, slashed resources for public health and the environment, and advanced fossil fuel industry propaganda. These moves only serve corporate interests — at the expense of ordinary people and the planet.
Already, the administration has scrubbed government websites providing information on climate change and environmental justice. And it’s attempted to slash funding for research on climate and medical science (though a federal judge has temporarily blocked the defunding of medical research).
Meanwhile, in a pair of astonishingly irresponsible moves, the administration has fired a large number of staff of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, which identifies and tracks emerging epidemics, and pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization — even as we face the serious risk of a worldwide bird flu pandemic.
On the climate front, Trump has launched an ideological attack against the very idea of environmental justice. That’s the idea that marginalized communities — including people of color and poor people of all races — suffer the worst from pollution. There’s a large body of peer-reviewed scientific literature confirming this pattern, but Trump and his ideologues don’t care.
Elsewhere, Trump’s Energy Secretary — former fossil fuel executive Chris Wright — has made the outlandish claim that electricity in the U.S. is more expensive today, and the electric grid is less reliable, because of closure of coal-fired power plants.
Every part of this industry propaganda is verifiably false. The U.S. electricity grid is highly reliable. While electricity rates are rising, the increase over the 10-year period from 2013 to 2023 was only about 1% in inflation-adjusted terms.
If anything, coal plant retirements were a factor in keeping rates lower, since the plants being retired are older plants with higher operating costs. And this year, solar energy is expected to be a major contributor to keeping rates almost unchanged.
Significantly, every one of these facts comes from the Energy Department’s own research and data. That’s why we shouldn’t let them scrub it.
The administration’s erasure of data has profound human consequences.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the foremost international climate science institution, “Human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people,” including “reduced food and water security.”
These statements are in the present tense. Severe climate change impacts are already occurring, and will get much worse if we don’t slash our greenhouse gas emissions rapidly. Disasters like this year’s Los Angeles wildfires and last year’s floods in Appalachia and the Southeast will become more frequent and damaging.
By censoring and defunding climate science, Trump and his cronies are trying to erase the link between these impacts and fossil fuel pollution. Trump has been effectively bribed by fossil fuel oligarchs — and he’s returning the favor by making it official U.S. government policy to remove all restraints on the growth of their industry.
Under Biden, fossil fuel companies reported record profits as drilling reached record highs in the United States. Yet consumers still battled high gas prices and other costs. Under Trump, doing favors for this polluting industry is no likelier to benefit regular people.
An administration claiming to crack down on “fraud, waste, and abuse” in government is doing the opposite. It’s engaging in corruption on a massive scale to benefit wealthy, politically connected oligarchs — at the expense of the rest of us.
Basav Sen directs the Climate Policy Program of the Institute for Policy Studies. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org. Banner photo: The Gainesville March for Science, held on Earth Day 2017. (Todd Van Hoosear, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons).
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