Under Trump, the U.S. is alone in its climate denial
At this year's United Nations climate conference, China is expected to set a "very ambitious" goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. India recently overtook Germany to become the world's third largest generator of renewable power. The European Union, where greenhouse gas emissions have been falling, is now generating 11 percent of its electricity from solar power, surpassing coal for the first time. And the United States? Under President Trump, the world's largest economy is rolling back emissions regulations, ramping up the production of fossil fuels and dismantling federal efforts to monitor and respond to climate change. As I report in a new article, the United States now stands virtually alone on the world stage in its disregard for the growing threats posed by a rapidly warming world, even as global temperatures reach record highs and extreme weather causes more death and destruction. But the Trump administration is turning a blind eye to the reality that climate change is a major threat to countries around the world, including the United States. More than that, the White House is undermining the country's capacity to understand the science of a warming planet, and to prepare for the consequences. The administration is firing scientists, shuttering long-running research projects that monitor our changing atmosphere, and canceling major reports that detail how a hotter planet will impact the economy. It is also scaling back its efforts to help when disaster strikes, closing programs that were designed to make communities more resilient to extreme weather, and denying requests for assistance after deadly storms. Taken together, these moves are poised to leave the country less prepared and, over time, more polluted. They are also set to complicate the global climate talks that begin this November in Brazil. The Trump administration has not indicated if it is planning to send a delegation to the gathering, known as COP30. But the White House has so far shown no appetite to engage with the rest of the world on the issue of global warming. On President Trump's first day in office, he signed an executive order that would make the United States the only country to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
Waiting, often in the dark, for frozen E.P.A. fundsEarlier this month, I traveled to Puerto Rico to report on communities that had been affected by the Trump administration's freezing of $20 billion in climate and clean energy grants. In Puerto Rico, local credit unions, most of which are known as cooperativas, have been promised $147 million in Environmental Protection Agency funding to offer low-interest solar loans, but the money has been held up at the request of the Trump administration. Lee Zeldin, the agency's administrator, has repeatedly called the program a "green slush fund" and said it was vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse, though the agency has failed to produce evidence backing up those claims, despite a judge's request. But in Puerto Rico, where grid power is notoriously unreliable, rooftop solar can be a lifeline. In the coastal town of Salinas, I met one diabetic woman who used to rescue her refrigerated insulin during power outages by submerging it in cold water. After she installed solar panels and batteries, she didn't even notice two recent blackouts. Cooperativas, or member-owned community credit unions, play an increasingly important role in disaster preparedness and recovery in Puerto Rico. After Hurricane Maria devastated much of the island in 2017, and knocked out the power for months in some areas, many cooperativas reopened sooner than commercial banks, handing out food and water and coordinating federal aid deliveries. In the mountain town of Corozal, the Sagrada Familia Coop has expanded its disaster recovery operation by building a solar-powered community center where residents who lose power can charge their phones and get clean water. The new building is equipped with a full-scale commercial kitchen, and helicopters carrying emergency supplies can land in the parking lot. (Luckily, no helicopter has had to test the makeshift landing pad yet.) Many cooperativa leaders see low-cost solar loans as an extension of their hurricane recovery efforts. For the people I spoke to, rooftop solar is more about keeping the lights on than decarbonization. A legal battle over the $20 billion in funds continues this week in court. — Claire Brown More climate news from around the web:
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