This is terrifying.
Scorched Earth
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to roll back environmental protections while doubling down on fossil fuel production, pointing the United States in a terrifying direction given the growing climate crisis.
The threat is made particularly stark by the fact that a whopping 48 out of 50 US states are currently facing droughts, according to recent data collected by the US Drought Monitor spotted by The Guardian.
Following a blistering and record-beating summer — the warmest since records began in 1880 — more than 150 million Americans are facing a drought this week, greatly endangering food supplies and risking severe water scarcity.
While we still don’t know exactly what the incoming Trump administration’s agenda will look like as far as federal environmental protections are concerned, the prognosis is bleak.
While on the campaign trail, Trump vowed to pull the US out of the Paris Accord yet again and dismantle regulations on gas-guzzling cars and power plants.
In other words, while Biden wasn’t exactly a stalwart of protective environmental policy — US oil production has been booming under his leadership — an already dire situation could soon look a lot worse.
Wrong Way
It’s a precarious situation, with human activity-driven climate change driving an accelerating climate catastrophe. The science has been very clear: extreme weather, including a disastrous hurricane season, major floods, and wildfires is being driven by fossil fuel emissions and spiking global greenhouse gases.
Instead of heeding most recent warnings that the planet is standing at the edge of a precipice, Trump — a notorious climate change denier — will more than likely look the other way.
He has vowed to “drill, baby, drill,” and dismantle the Green New Deal, an environmental protection initiative he’s dubbed the “green new scam,” and dismissed as a “waste” of money.
But the potential for further disasters is greater than it has ever been. The United States remains the second biggest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Given Trump’s pledge, the country is set to double down on the trend — the exact opposite of where the world needs to be heading.
And time is running out.
“The window of opportunity we have requires not only decarbonization but unprecedented investment in the protection and strengthening of the Earth’s natural buffers against the impacts of the climate crisis: our forests, peatlands, grasslands and marine ecosystems,” senior director of programs of the Climate and Land Use Alliance Dan Zarin wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill.
“Critically, we need to face facts,” he added. “We are living on a planet already hotter and more unstable than at any time in human history. Pretending otherwise will only perpetuate and worsen human suffering and the demise of nature. ”
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