Some forms of damage can be undone. Alliances that are strained can be repaired, although it might take years. Broken trade agreements can be restored. Wedges driven between races for purposes of political gain can be removed, even if healing those cleavages takes decades if not generations.
The same is true of efforts to restore constitutional norms of government and of basic respect, such as the once-universal rule that a president should never place his thumb on the scales of justice by commenting on a criminal case, especially when the jury is trying to deliberate. It’s stunning how quickly such common-sense notions can be trampled, but eventually common sense will also dictate their restoration.
In other cases, however, the damage is permanent, so large in scope and scale that it is not repairable in any time frame comprehensible by the human mind. The Trump administration’s concerted campaign to undo every effort at slowing climate change falls into that category.
Early in its term, it withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. It is abandoning efforts to improve automobile mileage, a step that in time will increase oil consumption by 500,000 barrels a day. That’s no problem, says the administration. Earlier this month, it formally reversed decades of government policy by announcing that efforts to conserve oil and gasoline are no longer necessary.
On and on it goes. The administration is reversing rules intended to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. It is undermining "clean energy" sources such as wind and solar, and undercutting electric-vehicle sales on the grounds that "people just don't want to buy them." (Globally, electric-vehicle sales are up 69 percent over the past year.)
President Trump is even proposing to invoke national security to justify seizing control of the nation's privately owned power grid, so that he can then dictate the use of coal-burning plants even when lower-cost sources are available.
It’s important to put this into context. Even before this administration took power, our efforts to slow the rise of global temperatures fell well short of what was necessary and achievable, and we are seeing the consequences. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the six warmest years on record have occurred since 2010. The four warmest years on record are 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, and if current trends hold, 2018 will join that list.
Google historic drought and historic heatwave and historic rainfall and historic wildfires. Weather events that should be occurring once in a thousand years are occurring multiple times within a decade. Yes, the climate is always changing, but scientists say that changes this profound and fast are found nowhere in the geologic record, not even close. Climate changes that would otherwise take millenia are occurring within the span of a human life -- your life, and my life -- and we stand here as both witness and cause.
Science predicted all this would happen, and the skeptics scoffed. What science predicted is now occurring, and still they scoff, denying what they see happening all around them. And there’s no going back from this, no repairing this damage. Once put into the atmosphere, greenhouse gases cannot be removed. At a critical moment when we should be doing more, we are doing even less, and as a consequence the heating and weather disruptions that we are experiencing will only be the beginning of what our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren experience.
And just as we look back at those we call the Greatest Generation, grateful and a bit awed by their accomplishments, we too will be remembered by those who follow, only they will look back at us in anger and bafflement.
About the Author
