Disaster as Trump's energy policy totally disregards climate change
Energy — where we get it, how we use it and what it costs — is fundamental to the quality and stability of modern life. It influences virtually everything we do and affects everything we hope to have in the future.
Few areas of government policy are more important. Preventing nuclear holocaust comes to mind, but it's increasingly apparent today that energy policies rank a close second. So, we must ask why President Trump is imposing short-sighted, irrational and profoundly destabilizing energy policies on this and future generations of Americans.
The president dwells in a fantasy land where there are no downsides to America's fossil-fuel addiction. Yet, our history is rife with oil wars, price and supply shocks, pollution-related diseases, and now the catastrophic weather disasters related to global climate change.
No place and no one is safe from the consequences of fossil energy pollution. Yet Trump continues to deny that global warming is real and primarily caused by burning coal, oil and natural gas.
He has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to stop regulating fossil fuel pollution and told the industry, which already produces more oil and gas than any other country, to "drill, drill, drill" for more. At the same time, he is handcuffing the industry's competition by freezing public investments in less expensive clean energy from sunlight, wind, geothermal and other inexhaustible resources.
Now, with weather disasters growing more frequent and deadly, Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem say they plan to kill the government's principal disaster response agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Trump's perverse policy is to make weather disasters worse while turning the government's back on the victims.
While we can thank fossil fuels for the lifestyles and conveniences most Americans enjoy today, the legacy of their long dominance is the destabilization and degradation of environmental systems critical to life. The atmosphere is one of those systems. Unprecedented weather extremes are the result of dumping fossil-fuel pollution into it. As the dumping continues, weather disasters become more frequent and destructive. The American people have been hit by an average of 23 major weather disasters (those with damages exceeding $1 billion) annually over the last five years, compared to only nine in the previous 45.
Entire communities are wiped out today by fires, floods and tornadoes. Nearly 40 percent of the country is experiencing drought-related water crises. Two of America's largest water reservoirs, which supply potable water and electricity to millions of people in seven western states, are reaching "dead pool status."
Heat waves, the biggest weather-related killer in the U.S., are inhibiting outdoor work ranging from construction to agriculture. Real estate values are falling in disaster-prone places, but they are still overpriced by hundreds of billions of dollars. The result is a "climate bubble" that threatens another crash like the subprime mortgage crisis that triggered a global recession in 2007-2008.
Trump refuses to recognize these realities. He still calls climate change a hoax. His Energy secretary says the world's net-zero-carbon goal is "sinister." At the Environmental Protection Agency, Administrator Lee Zeldin has proudly launched the "biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history" to "drive a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion" and "unleash American energy." What the administration is really unleashing is more pollution, more disasters and more lost lives and treasure.
Trump says more oil and gas production will lower energy costs for American families, but a global market rather than U.S. production will determine these costs. The U.S. Treasury Department has predicted that fossil-fueled climate change will cause lost wages, more medical expenses, higher consumer prices, astronomical insurance premiums, and "significant financial strain" for many American households.
Although Trump claims that global warming is a scam, the real scam is his energy policy. It is designed not for energy security but to satisfy big oil's greed and maintain its support of Trump's power.
How do we develop a sane national energy policy? The biggest obstacle is partisanship. Republicans should never have allied with big oil to politicize climate and energy policies. Fossil energy pollution and global warming are universal threats, and Americans realize it.
Over 70 percent of Americans acknowledge that global warming is happening, and 63 percent worry about it. Nearly half of Americans say they've personally experienced its effects. Two-thirds want the U.S. economy to shift to 100 percent clean energy in the next 25 years, much more rapidly than past big energy transitions.
No part of the United States, red or blue, is exempt from weather disasters. Rebuild by Design, a disaster-mitigation think tank, notes that climate-related disasters occurred in all of the nation's congressional districts except two during 2011-2024. Over 95 percent of Americans live in counties that experienced one or more major disaster declarations during that time, and 40 of the 50 states experienced 20 or more major disasters.
What should Congress do? More to the point, what should the American people demand?
Congress should depoliticize climate change and the transition to clean energy. It should preserve clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill; end taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels and production on public lands; strengthen rather than suspend EPA's regulation of fossil fuel pollution; prevent Trump from defunding the government's climate science and information programs; and direct him to reenter the Paris climate agreement. The Senate should elevate the agreement to formal treaty status where commitments have the force of domestic law.
In addition, Congress should require the administration to present a plan to improve and streamline FEMA, and it should pass the bipartisan bill introduced recently to elevate FMEA to an independent agency that reports directly to the president.
Trump's energy policy and the partisan standoff on climate policies in the United States are a "profound abdication of leadership," as one progressive group put it. Global warming is advancing while Trump is forcing the government to retreat. For the sake of all Americans now and in the future, the abdication must end.
William S. Becker is a former regional director at the U.S. Department of Energy and author of several books on climate change and national disaster policies, including the “100-Day Action Plan to Save the Planet,” published by St. Martin’s Griffin, and “The Creeks Will Rise: People Co-Existing with Floods,” published by the Chicago Review Press.