By Julia Helldorfer, Staff Writer
The United States has had previous plans in motion to combat the climate crisis. Ever since President Donald Trump took office for his second term, we have seen his opposition to what has been put in place to decrease the effects of the climate crisis.
The Climate Crisis has been progressively becoming a mounting problem. We see this in temperature changes and natural disasters happening more rapidly. One recent natural disaster–the wildfires sweeping through Los Angeles. According to The World Weather Attribution climate change increased the likelihood of wildfire disaster. Local communities to Long Island can also see the effects of climate change.
An example of local climate issues involves a major rain and wind storm on Aug. 18, 2024. The news said there was going to be heavy rainfall, however, not to the extent that resulted. Stony Brook was hit the hardest in the storm with a total of nine and a half inches of rain. The roads were flooded, leaving some with major damage.
The world just surpassed one and a half degrees Celsius as an average temperature. It is stated in the Paris Agreement that the earth’s average temperature should never surpass one and a half degrees Celsius, or it will lead to the effects of the climate crisis becoming more severe.
Columbia Climate School has a website called “Climate Backtracker” where they record and post one of the steps the Trump administration has taken to “scale back or wholly eliminate federal climate mitigation and adaptation measures.” So far, there are 53 efforts listed on the site that are set out to be reversed or eliminated. These include participation in the Paris Agreement, alternative energy sources, and other methods.
The Paris Agreement summarized acknowledges humankind has influenced the climate. The livable average temperature is below two degrees Celsius. They state they want to limit temperature increase to one and a half degrees Celsius. It also states that countries with more money will put at least 100 billion dollars into working towards decreasing climate change. They agree every 5 years countries will revise their emissions reduction targets, as well as urging countries to speed up clean energy technology development.
President Trump stated that “In recent years, the United States has purported to join international agreements and initiatives that do not reflect our country’s values or our contributions to the pursuit of economic and environmental objectives moreover, these agreements steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people.”
Graduate Student Lauren Russell states “He left the Paris Agreement the first time, so everyone knew it was going to happen again. It’s not surprising because his whole campaign was “drill,
baby drill”. It’s infuriating, but we have thousands of scientists and government officials who disagree with what he is saying. The United States is also one of the only countries that has not ratified the UN High Seas Treaty, but we do follow the rules of it. So I hope that even though we are not in the Paris Agreement, we can somehow still follow the rules to some capacity.”
President Trump also signed an executive order, with the goal of increasing the United States’s gas production. As Trump stated many times through the campaign he wants to “Drill, baby drill.” Trump’s policies have also shut down projects producing clean energy such as wind energy projects. According to the companies themselves, such as TotalEnergies, stated on their website they have “paused the development of a planned offshore wind farm off the coast of New York due to political uncertainties after Donald Trump’s recent election win.” This will cause the United States to fall behind alternative energy sources and clean energy goals.
Graduate Student James Dugan states “We as a country need to let the government and lawmakers what we believe is right. I also believe petitions and protests are the best way to voice your opinion and show the government what we want.”
Many are concerned with how Trump is handling the climate change crisis. You can research climate change and related topics on climate.law.columbia.edu, climate backtracker, to understand more about what goes into climate change issues.
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