Mel Gurtov: Trump triggers retreat on climate front

Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, serves as an emeritus professor of Political Science at Portland State University.

We once took for granted everyone concerned with global warming outside the Trump administration orbit accepted scientists’ conclusion that 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming was the critical threshold. But that’s no longer true.

In the wake of its pullout from the Paris Accords, the administration has ignored climate scientists’ overwhelming findings on the human causes of global warming and stifled publication of their research. It has fired government scientists for being environmental “activists,” sought to dismantle federally funded research centers, and eliminated the Environmental Protection Agency’s longstanding “endangerment finding” on threats to health posed by climate change — all in order to promote the interests of the fossil fuel industry.

We thought we could still rely on influential outsiders not tied to oil, gas, and coal to stand firm on combating climate change. But as Leah Aronowsky writes in Foreign Policy magazine:

“Climate elites have walked back their previously hawkish positions. Bill Gates, for whom climate change has long been a signature issue, published a memo last October in the lead-up to the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Brazil, or COP30, criticizing the ‘doomsday outlook’ of the climate community. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who as governor of the Bank of England described climate change as a ‘defining issue for financial stability,’ is … aggressively fast-tracking permits for liquefied natural gas export terminals. The same banks that once promised to no longer provide financing for new coal projects or drilling in the Arctic in the name of supporting net-zero goals have recently begun issuing forecasts about the business opportunities that 3 degrees of warming could bring. Even the European Union — long the world’s self-styled leader on climate — has recently retreated from its most ambitious policies, abandoning a planned ban on new internal combustion engine vehicles and watering down its emissions reductions targets in the name of maintaining economic competitiveness.”

Taking advantage of these retreats, China has become the “clean energy superpower.”

What that shift means is that the Western model for mitigating climate change, built around the 1987 ozone treaty, known as the Montreal Protocol, has failed - a model, Aronowsky writes, that recommended we “establish a scientific consensus about the nature of the threat, cultivate international political concern, and then negotiate a treaty organized around binding targets and timetables that included carve-outs for the developing world.”

The universally approved ozone treaty has never been followed by any other. Instead of pledges by governments and international conferences, China has presented a model that emphasizes green technology - batteries, EVs, solar panels, wind farms — all available via purchase or foreign aid bequest. Aronowsky concludes, “It turns out ... that the West was merely inventing a market for the products China now sells to the world.”

Meanwhile, the US continues to leap backward on the environment.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration went do far as to discard a longstanding rule protecting the habitats of endangered animals. It is now legal for farmers, fossil fuel companies and land developers to destroy these species’ nests.

This new ruling comes on the heels of another, in March, that exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from measures to protect endangered species, including whales.

A second administration step came via the appointment of yet another climate denier to a key post — Matthew Wielicki, a professor without any background in climate science, but plenty of podcasts that question it. He will lead the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which compiles the annual National Climate Assessment.

Hundreds of climate experts who had previously worked on the assessment were fired last spring. So expect that the next edition to have little if anything to say about drought, wildfires or other critical events fueled by climate change.

And how about investigating microplastics in the seas?

The EPA had planned last year to require fish farms in federal waters to monitor microplastics, which can harm public health in numerous ways. But officials recently decided otherwise — and fired one of their own who dared question the reversal.

After all, if a fish farm company were required to investigate microplastics, other industries might be required too. Ridiculous.

The fired employee is appealing the firing, arguing that removing the monitoring of microplastics was “unscientific, politically motivated, unethical, and an abuse of authority.”

Finally, speaking of retreats, how about the turnabout in the auto industry on battery-powered SUVs and trucks? The New York Times reported July 15 on the sudden move away from EVs by virtually every automaker, thanks in no small part to the Trump administration’s elimination of the tax credit and gutting of emission standards.

The Times warns, “The combined cost of this industry about-face remains nothing short of staggering.” But that doesn’t compare with the long-term impact.

“We pulled a U-turn while the rest of the world was pushing forward,” an auto journalist says. By “the rest of the world,” he mainly means China, which now accounts for about three-quarters of all EVs sold worldwide.

At the federal level, the environmental protection community has occasionally fought back successfully against the Trumpian anti-science, pro-industry agenda. For example, the administration’s attempted dismantling of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, an indispensable source of weather research, was blocked by a federal judge in June in a lawsuit brought by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the nonprofit organization that oversees the center. The judge issued a temporary injunction.

In another win, former employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recreated a website that Trump had closed down in order to quash its climate data. The administration fired hundreds of NOAA employees, several of whom have since resurrected climate.gov as climate.us.

But let’s face it, a government whose leader decides climate change is a “hoax,” whose political fortunes are tied to the fossil fuel industry, and who holds sway in both Congress and the Supreme Court, has enormous power to turn scientific findings on their head. As the few victories against this tidal wave make clear, it is up to courageous scientists and judges to resist — just as is true for doctors, forest rangers and whistleblowers who cannot sit idly by while this administration acts against the public interest on vaccines, national forests and official corruption.

Fortunately, their efforts are fortified by countless state and local organizations committed to protecting watersheds, air, animals, lands and the rights of nature itself.