Some forms of damage can be undone. Strained alliances can be repaired. Broken trade agreements can be restored. Wedges driven between races for purposes of political gain can be removed, even if healing those cleavages may take decades if not generations.
The same is true of efforts to restore constitutional norms of government, such as the understanding 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 have been trampled, but eventually common sense will also dictate their restoration.
In other cases, however, the damage is 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. 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 so that he can seize control of the nation’s privately owned power grid, allowing him to dictate the use of coal-burning plants even when lower-cost sources are available.
To be fair, our efforts to slow global warming were falling well short of what was necessary and achievable even before this administration took office, and we are seeing the consequences. The six warmest years on record have all occurred since 2010; the four warmest years on record are 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, and if current trends hold, 2018 will make it five for five.
All over the planet, we see historic drought and historic heatwaves and historic rainfall and historic wildfires. Weather events that should occur 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. Climate changes that would otherwise take millennia are happening within the span of a human life — your life, and my life — and we stand here as both witness and cause.
Science predicted this would happen, while the skeptics scoffed. They scoff even now, denying what they see happening all around them. There’s no going back from this, no repairing this damage. And at a critical moment when we should be doing more, we are instead doing a lot less.
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.
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