T.The air outside my window is yellow today. Yesterday it was orange. The air quality index is over 200. The Environmental Protection Agency defines this as a “health warning” in which “everyone can experience more serious health effects if exposed to it for 24 hours”. Unfortunately, over the course of several days the index has grown to over 200.
The west is burning. Wildfires are burning homes in California, Oregon and Washington Washington, killing scores, making many sick, displacing hundreds of thousands, burning entire towns to the ground, consuming millions of acres, and destroying millions of acres in the United States. The west empties the third part thickly. , Acids and dangerous fumes.
Yet the president has said and done almost nothing. A month ago, Trump wanted to save lives in Reagan and California from “rioters and robbers.” He sent federal forces to the streets of Portland and threatened to send them to Auckland and Los Angeles.
Today Portland is in danger of burning and Auckland and Los Angeles are under health alert. Trump will visit California on Monday, but he has said little.
One reason: these states voted against him in 2016 and he still has evil.
He came close to rejecting California’s request for emergency funding.
“He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses have burned down because he’s so angry that people in the state of California didn’t support him,” said Miles Taylor, the staff’s former Homeland Security chief.
Another explanation for Trump’s silence is that wildfires are linked to human-climate change, which Trump has done everything humanly possible to make worse.
Extreme weather disasters are rampant in the Americas. On Wednesday, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration released its latest state-of-the-art climate report, which found that the U.S. suffered ચાર 4 billion in disasters in August alone. In addition to the wildfires, there were two tremendous hurricanes and an extraordinary Midwest Derecho.
These are inconvenient facts for a president who has spent most of his presidency trying to eliminate every major environmental and environmental policy he can control.
Trump has been the most atmospheric president in history, initiating his unilateral decision to pull out of the Paris climate deal.
He called climate change a “betrayal.” He claims, without any evidence, that windmills cause cancer. He has weakened the Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide from power plants and cars and trucks. He has withdrawn rules on clean air, water and the regime of toxic chemicals. It has opened up more public land for oil and gas drilling.
He has specifically targeted California, repealing the state’s authority to set stricter car emission standards than the actions required by the federal government.
Overall, the Trump administration has overturned, repealed, or otherwise overturned about 70 environmental laws and regulations. More than 30 rollbacks are still in progress.
Now, seven weeks before election day, as much of the country was flooded somewhere or suffering other consequences of climate change, Trump no doubt defended his record and just attacked Biden.
The core of “ [Biden’s] The economic agenda against the American agenda is a hard left crusade, “Trump said in a speech at the Rose Garden last month.
Quite. While Biden has proposed t 2tn investment in a large-scale green jobs program to build a renewable energy infrastructure, the focus of his campaign is not exactly radical on climate change. The money will be used to improve energy efficiency, build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations and increase renewable energy from wind, solar and other technologies.
Biden aims to end the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity by 2035, and to push the United States to increase its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Their goals can be very humble. If there is any sign of what has happened in the West now, 2050 will be too late.
Still, Americans have a clear choice. In a few weeks, when they decide whether Trump qualifies for four more years, climate change will come to the ballot.
The choice should not be difficult. Like the coronavirus, the dire consequences of climate change – coupled with Trump’s outright misuse – prove clear ambiguity that he can’t care less about people’s interests.
