Some things in education no longer need to be said. Two plus two equals four. Atoms contain protons, neutrons and electrons. The Earth is round. Global climate change, the strengthening of dramatic weather patterns around the world due to the actions of humans, should be one of these educational givens. But for President Donald Trump, it is not.
Trump’s views on climate change have been clear since the 2012 presidential election, when Trump tweeted that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S manufacturing non-competitive.”
Recently, he’s qualified his views, but the result is no less distressing. In an interview with 60 Minutes on October 14, Trump said of climate change that “something’s changing, and it’ll change back again. I don’t think it’s a hoax. I think there’s probably a difference, but I don’t know that it’s man-made.”
Trump’s skepticism of climate change is reflected in his policies, as Trump has led the United States out of the Paris Agreement, slashed rules against coal pollution and rolled back fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks.
Perhaps most dangerously, Trump said scientists warning of climate change disasters “have a very big political agenda.” Climate change is not political. It’s a global event that will have monumental effects.
At 17 years old, I have taken a year of Honors Earth Science and am a quarter into AP Environmental Science (APES). I am not even half a year into a college level science class, but the fact that humans are changing the environment on a large and measurable scale is undeniable.
As one of NASA’s lead climate scientists tweeted October 14, “all [of the] recent trends in climate are due to human activity.”
In APES, we’ve already looked at the basic impact that urban development can have on ecosystems. A lab investigating the school development and temperature revealed that paved areas lead to higher risks of polluted ecosystems and higher temperatures in those areas.
The APES curriculum depends on the reading of the 17th edition of Living in the Environment by G. Tyler Miller. At the end of most, if not every, chapter is a section about how humans are affecting the environmental cycles and organisms discussed in the chapter. Each of these effects is backed by numerous studies; there is no room for doubt.
Just earlier this month, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the world was heading towards a temperature rise of three celsius.
Trump holds a bachelor’s degree from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in economics. I do not even hold a high school diploma, and have over a semester to go in taking a college-level environmental class. Yet I recognize that humans are the driving force in global climate change and wonder why the president cannot do the same.
This is a very powerful and well-written article and the graphic is absolutely sick. Best of Proconian! Keep it up!