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Americans have been accustomed to back-and-forth policy whiplash on the environment as Republicans and Democrats move in and out of the White House.
In Kentucky, we’ve witnessed that tug-of-war up close through the lens of the coal mining industry and electric utilities that burn coal.
For example, after President Bill Clinton tightened pollution controls on coal-fired power plants through a regulation known as “new source review,” which required new or modified plants that increase emissions to install tighter controls, President George W. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency sought to reverse course and was at least partially successful.
After Barack Obama followed Bush, his EPA put in place a raft of pollution reduction rules and programs, many of them targeting coal mining and coal burning — significant contributors to water pollution and global warming. Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell dubbed those years as “Obama’s war on coal,” and President Donald Trump took steps to reverse many of those environmental initiatives after he was elected in 2016.
Now we have a second Trump administration following President Joe Biden, who did the most of any president to address climate change through legislation (Inflation Reduction Act, for one) and executive actions to boost cleaner power from wind and solar and reduce heat-trapping emissions from cars and other methods of transportation.
This time, when it comes to the federal government’s response to climate change and the environment, what is happening goes far beyond a normal tit-for-tat change in public policy. The Trump administration is taking a wrecking ball to the very infrastructure of climate science — going after the scientists themselves and the institutions that support their work.
Consistent with Project 2025, Trump has sought to neuter NOAA and NASA climate scientists by denying funding and seeking to eliminate climate research programs. And last week, EPA eliminated references to how people were contributing to rising temperatures from some of its climate change webpages.
News of Trump’s latest assault broke on Dec. 17, with USA Today reporting that the administration is moving to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, a leading global climate and meteorology research center. Trump officials complained to the newspaper that NCAR was a “hub for climate alarmism.”
The only thing the administration got right in that statement is that NCAR is a hub.
As Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, wrote on Linked In, NCAR is “quite literally (atmospheric scientists’) global mothership.”
Nearly everyone, she wrote, “who conducts research in climate, atmospheric science, and weather — not only in the U.S. but around the world — has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources.
“NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes — the largest community climate model in the world. That too.”
Hayhoe concluded: “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”
Fine, let’s have the debate about what, if anything, should be done to address climate change, which credible scientists and scientific institutions agree is caused by burning fossil fuels and other human activities. What are the pros and cons of Kentucky lawmakers, or the Trump administration, adopting policies to keep coal in business and at what cost to electric utility consumers and the environment?
But stifling science promotes a philosophy that ignorance truly is bliss. It goes along with the administration’s equally anti-democratic attacks on journalists and attempts at intimidating or trying to silence media outlets.
Shutting down this well-respected global climate and weather science lab is stupid and tragic. This is more than shooting ourselves in the foot. It’s shooting the messenger, which is probably the point.
All of this brings to mind the satirical black comedy “Don’t Look Up,” starring Louisville native Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio as scientists who tried in vain to warn the world of a catastrophic comet collision. “We really did have everything, didn’t we? I mean, when you think about it,” DiCaprio’s character said near the end of the movie.
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: [email protected].
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Previously Published on kentuckylantern with Creative Commons License
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