Trump Administration Working Tirelessly To Make Climate Change Mitigation Impossible
Almost every day we learn about a new way in which the Trump Administration has eviscerated our nation’s capacity to safeguard its people from a certain type of environmental harm. Today, we had this little beauty: A new mission statement has been proposed for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), calculated to greatly impede its role in minimizing the damage we’re incurring from global warming.
From the Union of Concerned Scientists:
The mission of NOAA has been:
- To understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts;
- To share that knowledge and information with others; and
- To conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources.
The suggested new mission statement would be:
- To observe, understand and predict atmospheric and ocean conditions;
- To share that knowledge and information with others; and
- To protect lives and property, empower the economy, and support homeland and national security.
This is a shocking change in the mission of one of the nation’s premier scientific agencies. Axing its focus on climate change and resource conservation is foolhardy. Understanding the changing climate is becoming more critical by the day, as the effects of global warming mount, and it’s essential to protecting our economy and security, as the work of NOAA has shown time and again. NOAA is continuously working to improve forecasts of extreme events, which are intensifying in a warming world. As we know from last year’s wildfires and hurricanes, these kind of forecasts are critical for protecting American lives and infrastructure.
Each day, it’s more of the same: policies that favor the short-term profits of billionaires and the world’s largest corporations (in this case, the oil companies) at the expense of the health and safety of 99.99+% of the people on this planet.
The 99.99+% figure here suggests that only one in 10,000 benefits (in the short-term; no one benefits in the long-term), meaning that there are fewer than a million beneficiaries. That’s arguable, but it’s close. If you think that mere millionaires benefit, ask a few of them what happened to them in 2008, and get them to speculate on the consequences of what is almost certain to be a re-enactment, only on a far grander scale, as a result of the the dwindling tax base, revocation of banking restrictions, trade wars, insurance liabilities, etc.
Craig,
Let’s see what you are saying is the US is experiencing, or about to experience economic devastation as a result of the administrations policies ?
That would be very alarming, if it weren’t for the fact the US economy is in better shape and improving (especially for poor and blue collar workers) than any time since 1970 !
The change to the wording of the NOAA mission statement may have been modified, but then the NOAA is a taxpayer funded institution responsible to elected authority, not odd is it may seem, a collection of activist academics.
A new administration may have different policies, but right now the public elected the current administration was elected to carry out this exact mandate. That is the price for elected representative government. (your side doesn’t always win).
It’s also the price for politicizing science.