.jpeg?width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "Earth Day marks the chance to help save the planet. The environment was already on the edge before Trump took office – UK Times")
Tuesday marks the 55th anniversary of the United States’ Earth Day movement. As the world continues to get hotter and hotter, each passing day is but another that could be used to combat the terrifying and existential threat of human-caused climate change.
Climate change is expected to make raging wildfires more frequent, flash floods more severe, hurricanes stronger, droughts more persistent,and disproportionately affect Americans based on their socioeconomic status and location. The migration away from coasts has already begun, with 3.2 million people believed to have moved in an effort to escape flooding rainfall over the past two decades.
Even before the potentially devastating environmental policy implemented by the Trump administration, scientists had warned that the planet’s biggest lines of defense against the climate crisis – our natural carbon sinks that support Earth’s life-sustaining carbon cycle – could be starting to fail. “Carbon sinks” are reservoirs that absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than they release. Earth’s oceans and forests are the biggest carbon sinks, and levels are the highest ever.
The greenhouse gas is the main culprit for Earth’s warming thanks to emissions from the fossil fuel industry. Because humans emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than natural sinks can remove, the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continuously ticks upward.
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Due to the high levels of carbon, forests are reportedly barely taking any in themselves. Ocean carbon storage is weakening.
“We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land … but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,” Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said last September.
“Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end,” he said.
The U.S. is one of the biggest culprits for individual greenhouse gas emissions, and it is second only to China. While former President Joe Biden set ambitious climate goals to curb emissions – basically the only recourse to reverse course, according to climate scientists – the Trump administration has ignored and fired climate scientists and experts across fields.
New Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has deemed climate change a “religion,” ignoring the science and state of the planet in favor of President Donald Trump’s energy mandates. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is doing the same, moving to open land for more drilling and mining despite proven harms and the environmental costs. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says she plans to expand domestic timber production, opening national forests to logging. Deforestation releases large amounts of carbon and can also affect the ability to soak up greenhouse gases.
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After “driving a dagger” into regulations to prevent pollution, including a landmark climate finding, Zeldin wished Americans a “Happy Earth Day.”
“From the mountains to the plains, the rivers and the oceans, across our nation’s vast landscape, we all have a stake in our environment,” he wrote, adding that the administration remains “committed to clean air, land and water for all Americans. We can and we will accomplish this goal.”
Following Zeldin’s statement, the White House congratulated itself for policies that are contrary to what they called the “Green New Scam,” alleging that the president “follows science” without mentioning climate change.
By expanding logging, the administration claimed it was “improving wildlife habitats,” and applauded its move to open federal lands for energy development and produce “the cleanest energy in the world.” The White House also alleged that pausing wind projects — actual clean energy, unlike coal — would protect wildlife, with “detrimental” environmental effects “often [outweighing] their benefits.”
But, the realities of the planet’s climate peril cannot and will not be ignored. There are no boundaries to climate change. No country will be left alone.
“Over the past year, we’ve experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms,” Dr. Rick Spinrad, the former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a statement last summer. “We must recognize that these are clear signals of the damage carbon dioxide pollution is doing to the climate system, and take rapid action to reduce fossil fuel use as quickly as we can.”
