Since being elected into office last year, President Trump and his administration have been actively repealing environmental protection laws that have been in place for years.
According to the New York Times, his administration “has often targeted environmental rules it sees as overly burdensome to the fossil fuel industry, including major Obama-era policies aimed at fighting climate change.” This means that the Trump administration is repealing the laws that prevent businesses and corporations from making even more money by using production methods that pollute the environment.
Trump and his administration have repealed around 70 regulations thus far, most of those being air pollution and emissions as well as drilling and extraction, according to the New York Times. Some of the air pollution rollbacks include a Clinton-era rule designed to limit toxic emissions from major industrial polluters, a 2015 rule that prohibited the use of hydrofluorocarbons, powerful greenhouse gases as a replacement for ozone-depleting substances and announced intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. The process of withdrawing, however, cannot be completed until 2020.
According to an article written by Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney for the Washington Post, the Trump administration released a statement that the planet will warm seven degrees by 2100.
This rise in temperature would be catastrophic. “Many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater without costly coastal defenses. Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe,” Eilperin, Dennis and Mooney reported. The Trump administration, however, did not report this predicted rise in order to gain followers to combat climate change. Instead, they assume that “the planet’s fate is already sealed.”
Wyatt Smith, a sophomore English major, said “I personally think that the repeals are simply atrocious. Besides, with global warming being an obviously factual occurrence, I think President Trump is in blatant denial of what is true and what is fantasy. In other words, global warming is real, and these repeals are dangerous. If President Trump is not kept in check, then humanity as we know it may soon cease to exist.”
The world as a whole needs environmental protection laws for a very simple reason: the Earth is our home, and we have nowhere else to go if we destroy it. There is no “planet B.” Either we take care of what we have now, or severely regret it in years to come. While we do have to find ways to create and harness energy for our day to day lives, we should do so using renewable sources, such as wind, solar and water power.
Something that we see in nature consistently is it’s resiliency: a forest fire can lay the foundation for another forest by providing nutrients to the soil. Plants and animals can adapt and evolve to new environmental conditions. We cannot, however, rely on this fact. The pollution we are causing is preventing the Earth from adapting, from being resilient. If we do not act now, the planet will become unrecognizable and people will begin to suffer even more than they already are. Capitalism and profit should not be above the health and well being of ourselves, our families, or our planet.
