Editorial: Doubling down
The campaign to gut solar and wind power in the United States and promote fossil fuels is relentless. Paired with that is the promoters’ equally relentless campaigns of misinformation and greed. The Trump administration is not giving an inch on these catastrophic policies but in fact has a never-ending supply of fresh troops.
As we have noted in this space before, according to the Center for American Progress, an independent, non-partisan policy institute, “123 members of the 118th Congress deny that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels.” As for greed, these climate deniers have received more than $52 million in lifetime campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry.
The newest bombshell in the war against planet-protecting energy was triggered recently at the G20 Energy Abundance Ministerial in Houston, Texas, when Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin, the former congressman who represented the East End, said the Trump administration was repealing the majority of greenhouse gas requirements for U.S. power plants. The relentless Mr. Zeldin didn’t stop there, proposing to gut all “remaining greenhouse gas standards for the power sector.”
“For over 15 years, the Obama and Biden administrations implemented a war on coal to destroy reliable and affordable energy,” Mr. Zeldin said. “The Trump administration has come in to protect American energy … Americans will see a decrease in electricity prices, but this is just the beginning …”
Just the beginning? Believe them when they say it.
No one at the energy summit representing the U.S. made a single reference to the war in Iran, which has thrown energy sectors around the world into chaos and spiked fuel prices on a global scale. But you don’t have to go around the world. Go to your gas station.
The president has called clean energy initiatives “a scam,” which, of course, is idiotic on its face. It’s baffling that there are still people who deny that climate change (maybe campaign contributions have something to do with it) and that severe weather patterns are chiefly caused by the burning of fossil fuels that erode the planet’s atmospheric shield, something documented by an overwhelming consensus of scientists and scientific organizations.
We see change in climate affecting our shores with our own eyes. Rising sea levels have alerted area ferry companies to go into long-range planning to secure bulkheads and roadways and raise the landing docks. We applaud them for their forward thinking, looking at data and responding accordingly, as any business would.
Southold is looking to get coastal resilience into its town code, and we applaud that move as well.
What to do? Stay educated on a threat to the natural world that is being ignored by the powers-that-be and seek methods to change minds and actions.
