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CLIMATE WATCH - Billions of dollars will buy almost anything anybody wants, and on November 5th billions of dollars bought the world’s leading anti-climate-change political administration, aka: the Trump Administration, which is anti-almost-everything, except for a free reign to the almighty market. Price determines policy, and it buys political office.
According to Americans for Tax Fairness, 150 billionaire families broke all campaign-spending records by a country mile, spending $2 billion in total to get a Republican majority with $1.36 billion going to Republicans versus $413 million to Democrats and the balance to specific causes, proof positive that billions of dollars can buy anything.
The System Regulating Campaign Financing Has Collapsed
“Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director. “We need to rein in the political power of billionaire families by better taxing them and by effectively limiting their campaign donations. Until we do both, we can only expect the influence of the super-rich over our politics and government to escalate.” (Source: Billionaire Clans Spend Nearly $2 Billion On 2024 Elections, Americans for Fair Taxes, October 29, 2024)
America’s Climate Policy Cascading, into the dust bin.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that Forbes magazine (Oct. 24, 2024) issued its starkest, scariest climate warning… ever… a couple of weeks before the US election: We Are Afraid: Scientists Issue New Warning as World Enters ‘Unchartered Climate Territory.
It’s interesting that the Forbes’ We Are Afraid article came out just before the most important election of all time for the future, or lack of future, for the planet’s habitability. The initial paragraph of the Forbes’ article contains a stark warning that is shared by many top-level scientists around the world: “A distinguished international team of scientists on Tuesday issued the starkest warning yet that human activity is pushing Earth into a climate crisis that could threaten the lives of up to 6 billion people this century, stating candidly: ‘We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.”
Now the Trump Anti-Climate-Change administration is about to take control over the world’s leading democracy (maybe, but not). One can only wonder what impact this may have on scientists that claim we’re: “pushing our planetary systems into dangerous instability” with consequences this century of 6 billion threatened because of massive uninhabitable regions of the planet. Extreme heat and dwindling food supplies will prevail. The American electorate made this possible, winning the award for the Most Ill-Informed Ignorant People on the Planet, maybe of all time. As for demonstrated ignorance, all that’s required is to look at what’s happening to the climate system, weird, unprecedented stuff that doesn’t happen, ever, until now. And it’s broadcast on nightly news (1) atmospheric rivers flooding communities within minutes (2) Category Five hurricanes laying waste outside of normal hurricane season (3) tornadoes further North than ever before (4) hailstorms like golf balls destroying siding and roofs of buildings (5) home insurers dropping coverage in Florida and California (6) insurance premiums nearly doubling for homeowners. The list could go on and on, but the point is climate change is driving ordinary people out of homes and broke. The disasters are the result of human-generated fossil fuel CO2 bringing on an overheated haywire climate system that has exceeded the Paris ’15 climate conference agreement among all nations warning don’t go over +1.5°C pre-industrial by limiting CO2 emissions that blanket the planet and hold heat because it turns the climate system into an ogre of destruction, now in its early stages, worldwide. The proof is palpable on every continent, 2024 Will be World’s Hottest Year on Record, EU Scientists Say, Reuters, Nov. 7, 2024.
And this is only the start, with the anti-climate-change new administration in place, “it’ll get much worse.” But “getting much worse” on top of a climate system that is already exploding in our faces is destined to create havoc, destruction, and darkness like nobody can imagine possible. Trump will rescind climate-related commitments by the US such as the Paris 2015 climate agreement. The US is out, count on it as the country dusts-off its hands and walks away from tackling the most rambunctious dangerous climate system in human history just as it’s starting to brutalize major life-sourcing ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest, drying up because of severe drought as the Mississippi River’s low depth severely diminishes barge traffic transport of crucial agricultural product: “For the third year in a row, extreme drought conditions in the Midwest are drawing down water levels on the Mississippi River, raising prices for companies that transport goods downstream and forcing governments and business owners to seek alternative solutions,” Governing, Oct. 18, 2024.
Bloomberg Green/Green Daily published an article entitled: US Election 2024, presented by IBM, What a Trump Victory Means for Energy: “The win empowers him to deliver on his campaign pledges to go after climate policies he’s dubbed the ‘green new scam’ while reorienting the federal government toward pumping more crude and building more power plants.”
He’ll end federal policies that encourage EV sales. The EPA regulation on tailpipe pollution, which penalizes gas-guzzlers, thereby favoring EVs will be a top target. An executive order to accomplish this has already been drafted. Additionally, going after California’s strict car pollution standards via changes to the Clean Air Act. Trump favors dirty air to stimulate more gas-powered vehicle sales.
From A-to-Z Trump will unleash the fossil fuel industry to full blast operations, including lower tax rates, literally taking off the gloves of any federal regulation. This will be comparable to the Wild West at the turn of the 19th century, no holds barred with plans to open America’s public lands for oil development. Go for it!
Offshore wind is another target for closure, impacting developmental work already underway of multi-billion-dollar wind farms up and down the US East Coast. Trump intends to target offshore wind on “day one” probably via a moratorium imposed administratively.
The Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, flush with hundreds of billions of dollars of loan-backed authority readily avaiblable for clean-tech thanks to Biden’s IRA, is at risk. “Trump will be under dueling pressure to either kill off the program, ending a major source of support for green-technology commercialization, or to keep it running, just with a decidedly pro-fossil-fuel bent. Advocates of the latter approach say the office has made billions of dollars in interest for the federal government and that its support can be used to back natural gas, carbon capture and nuclear energy ventures.” (Bloomberg Green)
Additionally, Trump will terminate a suite of EPA rules that inhibit power-plant pollution, for example coal burning plants. Trump believes AI needs twice the amount of electricity currently supplied to the US. A 2024 rule limiting emissions from existing coal plants and new gas-fired units will be a top focus for removal.
Millions of members (over 70 million voters in the 2024 election) of the Most Ill-Informed Ignorant People on the Planet have sealed the fate of an abrupt enormously destructive climate system that’s already started misbehaving in earnest because of excessive levels of greenhouse gases like CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels, thus slamming the climate system down onto the mat, defeated, for the worse. How will it get better?
(Robert Hunziker, MA, economic history DePaul University, awarded membership in Pi Gamma Mu International Academic Honor Society in Social Sciences is a freelance writer and environmental journalist who has over 200 published articles appearing in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide.)
