Global Warming: Real or Not In the Eyes of Trump?

Wow, aren’t we lucky to have the type of President who cares so deeply about pressing civic issues?! Extreme sarcasm intended.

If you follow the news or even politics itself, you probably have heard that the Trump Administration instructed the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, to remove their page dedicated to Climate Change on the whitehouse.gov website, as there are incentives to put an end to previous President, Barack Obama’s climate change efforts. In December of 2015, The Paris Agreement was signed in to office in order to halt the changing climate. This agreement brought together all nations in an effort to tackle the issue of a rising climate by cutting greenhouse emissions as soon as they could. However, if a country wishes to pull out of this agreement after its ratification, they must wait four years. In order to work his way around this, Trump has hired Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a man who led fourteen lawsuits against the EPA. However, this plan does not come as a surprise to Americans as, during his entire campaign, Trump proved to have much disbelief in the concept of Global Warming. (Just as the tweets above state.) Although Trump has not officially taken the United States out of the Paris Agreement, he seems to be set on doing so, worrying many Americans.

On Tuesday, January 24, President Trump signed two executive orders in which the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines would be revived. These projects were halted under the Obama administration due to pressing concerns from climate change activists. The Army Corps had begun to look for alternate routes for the Dakota Access pipeline, one in which would not endanger nearby water supplies and sacred ground near the Standing Rock Sioux. However, once signing the executive order, Trump ordered the Army Corps to “hurry it up” and “take all actions necessary and appropriate” to get this pipeline installed, even if it meant not finding alternate routes and continuing on the original.

The Keystone XL also brought about skepticism for climate change activists, as it crossed national borders into Canada. Ex-President Obama argued that if this pipeline was put in place, it would strengthen Canada’s oil production, thus undercutting America’s global leadership in the climate change issue. However, the concerns that the Obama administration had on the pipeline did not seem to phase Trump. His executive order called for the State Department to “take all actions necessary and appropriate to facilitate its expeditious review” and gave them a deadline of 60 days for the final decision.

A third executive order was signed, giving a deadline of 180 days to the Secretary of Commerce to upgrade the pipelines within the United States “using materials and equipment produced in the United States, to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.” In addition, Trump also signed two more executive orders which requested to speed up environmental reviews of infrastructure projects.

It has been predicted that, if within the next four years, something is not done in order to prevent Global Warming, there will be a huge increase in the temperature. This increase would bring about even more detrimental effects to the Earth, in addition to the effects that have already, and continue to occur. Great deals of opposition to Trump’s executive orders have arisen. Opposition not only from climate change activists, but from scientists around the world. In fact, a Science March on Washington, which was inspired from the Women’s March on Washington that occurred a day after Trump’s inauguration. A march on this specific issue would help to gain attention from the public eye and help others to realize that this is an issue that not only affects our environment but ourselves as well. The EPA wasn’t the only government agency which was banned, but the Department of Agriculture as well, and even scientists, themselves, are being stripped of their ability to share their findings and also receiving less and less funding.

There is some good news to come out of all of this, though. Station Obama, which is a climate monitoring location, in a bay just off of the Antarctica Peninsula, will continue to monitor and conduct research on the pressing topic. Scientists will soon be returning to this site for a five week research cruise in the Southern Ocean, in which they will collect research on how climate change is affecting the Arctic, whether it be the melting of mass quantities of ice or fully changing ecosystems. Although Trump has completely different view on this subject, climate change is something that we cannot overlook, and we certainly cannot stop Global Warming by simply not talking about it.

 

Sources:

http://fortune.com/2017/01/30/donald-trump-paris-agreement-climate-change-withdraw/

http://fortune.com/2017/01/25/trump-administration-epa-climate-change-website/

http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/728879/paris-agreement-climate-change-what-is-how

http://www.livescience.com/57629-scientists-planning-washington-march.html

http://www.livescience.com/57577-station-obama-continues-climate-change-monitoring.html

One thought on “Global Warming: Real or Not In the Eyes of Trump?”

  1. Kathryn, I enjoyed (but am also continuing to be alarmed by) the content in your blog. It is startling how lightly Trump is taking the issue of climate change. Social media should not be a source of venting on such a heated (pun intended) topic. Or that is at least what I thought. Just today, I found a Huffington Post article that showed how, via social media, other nations are ironically showing their stance against newly inacted policies.
    “Swedish Politcians Troll Trump Administration While Signing Climate Change Law” highlighted the Internet posts of both Swedish and French politicians who took pictures of groups of all women (as opposed to a photo of Trump surrounded by men) discussing issues of climate change and reproductive rights. The directness of their responses is slightly combative, but it demonstrates just how engaged the international community is with issues on our homefront. They are fighting fire with fire, and given the influence of media in campaigns, I am neither surprised, nor disappointed. Maybe it is juvenile, but it appears that for the time being, social media is where politics are headed.

    I appreciated the flip side of your post: some of the solutions. You served to update me on this issue, which is a difficult task to accomplish with the constant political news currently. I had not heard of possibility of a Science March, but hey, given the popularity of the Women’s March, why not? I learned new information regarding Station Obama, too, a fixture I did know would remain beyond his Administration. I enjoyed your framing of the issue, as it was both entertaining (I am thinking of the Tweets at the beginning), and knowledgeable. You were able to mix your own views through your narrative voice, but balanced this with factual information.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/swedish-politicians-troll-trump-administration-while-signing-climate-change-law_us_58948c3be4b0c1284f2558ca

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