America’s Climate Action Dilemmas
About half of Americans are taking climate action on state, city, industry, and individual levels. Polls show between 2/3 and 3/4 think the US should take such action. However, we are currently in one of our periodic dominations by the richest in the Republican Party, and Republican voters are sorely misled by their conservative media into thinking that everything is okay, although the small number of farmers are suffering, and the common Republicans didn’t really get their promised tax break.
The initial setup of our Republic let the states dominate the Senate, while letting the public dominate the House, and both combined through electors to elect the President. Since the states contain the resource wealth of the country, especially with states of large area and a minimal population, the owners of resources can dominate the Senate. With 100 Senate or state electors and 435 House or population electors, the state might have been a smaller effect. But we also have the non-democratic practice of not splitting state electors proportional to the popular vote, but give all the electors to the leader in the state. Thus we elect a President who is deficient in popular votes. The states are mostly severely gerrymandered, so that the populace is also shut out of its full influence in the House.
We recently had the Citizens United ruling, where corporations could contribute to elections, and we have all sorts of ways for donors to give anonymously. Some of the richest industries are the fossil fuel ones, since gasoline, autos, electricity, natural gas, and pumped water distribution are necessities. This determines that there is vast misinformation about climate change by those industries, and their controlled media. They also now dominate the Senate, the President, and the leadership of all of the administrative departments and agencies, and promulgate policies totally friendly to the industries, and lacking any care for conservation or health. Since the Senate controls the appointment of judges, the judiciary is being replaced with conservative and industry oriented judges.
Despite being the leading economy, the US population of 327 million is only 4.2% of the 7.7 billion world population. Our greenhouse gas emissions are also a small percentage, such as in the previous article where our methane emissions were 6.3% of the world’s in 2012. Using the EDGAR study for 2017, the US total greenhouse gases emissions of 5.11 Gigatons of CO2e (equivalent) were 14% of the world total of 37.1 Gigatons. China had the most with 10.9 Gigatons and 29%.
So even if the US worked very hard to achieve Zero net emissions, we would only be eliminating 1/7 of the world’s greenhouse gases. This is not an excuse not to work toward the goal, but a motivation to expend research and development, as well as monetary support to helping the world to significantly reduce total world emissions. We should become a missionary on emissions.
The Obama administration set up the international Paris agreement by first collaborating with China to commit to progress on climate action. Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement, which actually doesn’t occur until the November Election Day in 2020. But in practice, there is not recognition and no cooperation, as shown in the G7 meetings. The excuse that he doesn’t believe in climate change is an insult to all of the US and world scientists who work on this, as well as the world science academies who all back the science. Trump’s fossil fuel backers completely control Trump and the other Republicans, just like the NRA does. Trump had tried to set up a secret White House advisory committee to cast doubt on the science community, but nothing has been heard from them.
While the Democratic Party is far more divided than in 2016, with still 6 divided months to go until the Super Tuesday primary, Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Republicans are running hard and taking advantage of all the privileges of control to raise campaign funds and to channel the election to Trump.
Trump has been filling his over 1,200 political appointees that require Senate confirmation to remove climate action regulations, and exploit all parts of the country for mining and fossil fuel production. According to the Washington Post, of the 731 key positions that require Senate confirmation, 481 have been confirmed, 99 are formally nominated, 7 are awaiting nomination, and only 115 have no nominees.
The world knows that we have combinations of states, with about half the US population, that legally oppose the actions of the Trump administration in changing regulations. Even leading companies in autos in fuel economy standards, and oil and natural gas in methane standards, oppose the Trump administration relaxing or eliminating regulations. As we have seen throughout the Trump administration and his executive orders, the use of laws are extended or ignored, as is the Constitution. Trump claims that he has the Absolute Right to do anything he wants. That isn’t in the Constitution. The Constitution and our government is based on Checks and Balances. That’s why we have the Senate, the House, the Courts, and the Fourth Estate, the Free Press.
Even if US international leadership and cooperation had continued, the rest of the world would still have had struggles, with the same type of fossil fuel magnates controlling countries, like Russia, the Middle East oil sheikdoms, and Australian coal.
Even among the states backing climate action, the path forward is not clear considering the Democratic split. Democratic cities are buried within Republican states, and their options must be limited because of that.
Our hopes to aid developing countries would be blocked by a federal government which is imposing its policies worldwide, and withdrawing from humanitarian projects and aid.
We still have hope for the future, but the current situation is still going backwards.
It was awkward to just see on TV President Trump asking his weathermen what the track of the maximal hurricane Dorian will be (winds of 185 mph), knowing that the basis of these calculations is often the same as in climate models. Modern meteorologists are well educated in climate change.
