Because half of my extended family lives in California, I’ve been acutely aware of the forest fires once again ravaging their hillsides for almost two months now.
Even so, the worry was somewhat removed.
On Thursday, however, things hit closer to home, when our beloved Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado came under siege. By mid-afternoon the park had been evacuated as well as Estes Park.
My elderly Aunt Dorothy is seeking refuge with a granddaughter in Boulder.
Watching the weather alert go from yellow — voluntary evacuation — to red left me weak in the knees.
The ravenous fires were consuming 6,000 acres an hour. And while you wish enough manpower could be roused to fight the towering inferno, it also seems a presumptuous risk.
ALMOST 100 environmental guidelines have been rolled back since Donald Trump took office. Of those, about 25% have to do with air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions, things that contribute to our warming planet.
Specifically, the Trump administration’s rollback on the 2009 fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks is the biggest setback to combating climate change. Under Trump’s policies, the path to making cars more fuel efficient — and thus releasing less carbon dioxide into the air — has been waylaid. The change, initiated this spring, allows automakers to retreat on their plans for fuel efficiency.
Without any regulations, the industry had a self-imposed annual goal to make cars 2.5% more fuel efficient. In 2009, the Obama administration bumped that goal to 5%. This spring, the Trump administration took it down to 1.5% a year, something even the auto industry has opposed.
Under the new standard, drivers are expected to consume about 80 billion more gallons of gasoline over the lifetime of today’s cars, releasing a billion more tons of carbon dioxide into the air.
Another gut-punch is the president’s rollback on electric plants to phase out their dependence on coal. Instead, states have been given permission to decide how far to scale back their greenhouse gas emissions, if at all.
Trump’s plan has no emission targets and allows utilities to continue to rely on coal, the dirtiest of all pollutants.
A future of cleaner energy depends on the phaseout of coal and replacing it in part with wind and solar. Scientists attribute the burning of coal, as well as other greenhouse gases, as to why the planet is experiencing more heat waves, extreme storms, droughts, fires, and floods.
From 2005 to 2017, the United States reduced its energy-related carbon emissions by 14%. In 2018, they started to rise again.
RECOGNIZING that humankind has a responsibility to keeping our air, water and wildlife healthy is the first step. Doing something about it, is the natural follow-up. Or should be.
