What About Planet Earth?
Save or sacrifice — it depends on the candidate
It is spring here in Austin, but you wouldn’t know it by glancing at a thermometer or strolling outside for a few minutes. It’s already hot as Hades, and the National Weather Service says it’s about to get worse — the forecasted high on Sunday is 101 degrees. If you live in Texas, you’re used to hundred-degree days, but not in May. We usually don’t have to contend with that kind of heat until mid-July.
Records keep breaking as the planet keeps getting warmer. 2023 was the hottest year on record. According to Copernicus, the European climate agency, the average temperature was 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than 2016, the former hottest year. 2024 is projected to be worse. The number one reason for the planet getting hotter? Greenhouse gas emissions, the largest portion of which come from gas-powered cars.
President Biden calls climate change an “existential threat.” His administration has been responsible for more than 100 new laws and initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and cutting pollution. A big part of his agenda is transitioning from gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles.
The Environmental Protection Agency under Biden recently finalized “tailpipe” rules, which require automakers to reduce emissions. Though Donald Trump has erroneously called these rules an electric vehicle mandate, automakers are free to get to the reduced emission threshold using whatever technology they choose. Electric vehicles are one way to do it and arguably the best way. The obvious reason is that no pollution comes from an EV’s tailpipe, because it has no tailpipe, or gas engine.
As you can imagine, big oil is big hurt. The industry is waging war against EVs, suggesting that the vehicles’ production, especially the batteries, is far worse for the environment than gas-powered cars. That is simply not true.
According to numerous studies, EVs produce less than half of the greenhouse gas emissions than traditional cars over the life of the vehicle, including battery production, vehicle production, and vehicle operation.
EVs use energy significantly more efficiently than combustion engines. So even if EVs get power from dirty grids, grids that get power from, say, coal plants, they are still 40% more efficient than cars that get power from gas.
EVs require only a one-time environmental impact — mining for minerals to build the battery, versus ongoing environmental impact — drilling for oil to produce gasoline. And the batteries are recyclable.
For months Donald Trump has been openly hostile toward electric vehicles, saying they will “kill” the auto industry. His remarks are at odds with an industry embracing EV production. Maybe it’s because the United Auto Workers endorsed Biden. But perhaps there’s a different reason — money.
Trump, long a climate change denier, doesn’t want to unplug only the electric car effort; he’s against wind and solar energy too. Last month he held a dinner at Mar-a-Lago for 20 oil and gas executives. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee reportedly offered that, if elected, he would scrap every one of Biden’s new environmental regulations in exchange for the oil execs raising $1 billion for Trump’s campaign.
Call it what you want: a shakedown, quid pro quo, scandalous, but apparently it isn’t illegal. He went on to suggest that $1 billion is a “deal” for the oil companies because of the taxes and financial regulations they wouldn’t have to pay. While dealmaking like this isn’t new, the stunning transparency is.
Senate Democrats think so too. Today, they opened a second investigation into that now infamous meeting and whether Trump offered a “policies-for-money transaction.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or an environmental scientist, to know our planet is changing, and fast. We can all feel it. Weather experts say higher temperatures are causing more severe weather, more frequently.
More needs to be done. The White House climate initiatives are only a beginning. To abandon them now would be, well, madness. I want my grandchildren and your grandchildren to know that we did our best to save our democracy and our planet.
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Dan
The very basic science of Global Warming predicted & WARNED since the 80s we could expect bigger, stronger & more powerful hurricanes. In general, hotter hots, colder colds, disruptions in normal weather patterns & more extremes everywhere, unless we cleaned up our pollution. Of course the GOP in the pocket of big oil have sabotaged environmental efforts at every turn.
Thanks, Dan, for continuing to speak out on climate change. However, I would prefer if journalists would not talk about climate in terms of "saving the planet." Everything we do to mitigate and reverse global warming is really about saving us -- human beings. We will not destroy the planet before we destroy ourselves. The planet will recover from the damage we are doing, but we may not. Thanks again for all you do!