By The Herald Editorial Board
It might seem as if Earth Day 2025 — and, really, at least the next three after that — will be particularly daunting, more call to the difficult work ahead than recognition of past accomplishments and hope for progress.
Last year was the warmest year on earth since record-keeping began in 1850; the last 10 years were the 10 warmest on record, according to the independent nonprofit research effort Berkeley Earth.
That record of the last decade weighs especially heavily as the world confronts the realities of what failing to limit the rise of global temperature to well less than 2 degrees Celsius — 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — and more ideally 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels as called for in the Paris Climate Agreement will mean for a range of devastating effects from climate change.
Backsliding: Providing no relief from those numbers are the political realities that arrived with the reelection of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency.
More than having again removed the United States from the Paris accords — as he did in his first term among the more than 125 environmental policies and regulations he rolled back — Trump in less than the first 100 days of his second term has stepped up his crusade against environmental protections and previous and planned actions to adapt to climate change and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
Just the two words alone are attacked; he and his administration have repeatedly branded climate change as a hoax — often one created by the Chinese — and have attempted to refute its existence by placing quotation marks around the phrase as if punctuation — like a Sharpie pen — holds mystical powers.
Among the more discouraging and bewildering actions taken by the Trump administration in just the last few weeks:
The administration has cut funding and staffing for the National Climate Assessment, a report issued every four years — the last report issued in 2023, with the next due in 2027 — and mandated by Congress that assesses global warming’s effects on human health, agriculture, the economy, energy production, transportation, ecosystems and more. The assessment, if Trump sees no value in it, is used by state and local governments — and the federal government itself — to prepare for the effects of global warming.
The National Institute of Health, part of the Department of Health and Human Services — overseen by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who promised to “Make America Healthy Again” — has announced it will end funding for research into the health effects of climate change, in particular planned studies into the impacts of wildfire smoke and extreme heat, including asthma, heart attacks, strokes and more.
And — because it’s not enough to attempt to reverse the work of Congress and past presidential administrations — Trump in an executive order has directed the Department of Justice to block “burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies” adopted by state and local governments.” Among the targeted policies are state requirements to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources, state-approved wind and solar projects, California’s ban of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, and laws that place a price on carbon emissions, such as Washington state’s cap-and-invest carbon market, which state voters upheld in November by a wide margin.
Denying what can’t be denied: If that’s a discouraging backdrop to Earth Day, Paul Roberts doesn’t disagree.
Roberts, a former Everett City Council member who was key to the city’s adoption of a climate action plan and past board chair for the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, has for nearly two years written a regular column for The Herald on the economic aspects of climate change.
Roberts, in a recent conversation said he views the current political climate on global warming as a disconnect between the physical world and cultural world; more fundamentally it’s a break between the immutable forces of physics, chemistry and biology and a belief system that fails to recognize those realities.
“Gravity exists, whether we like it or not,” Roberts said, as do the results of pumping more and more carbon into the atmosphere.
The global reaction to an overabundance of greenhouse gas emissions — notably carbon dioxide and methane — is one of physics and chemistry and can’t be dismissed by placing quote marks around the words climate change.
“We culturally have a hard time understanding that we are a part of the world and are not apart from it,” Roberts said. “Earth Day should remind us of that.”
It starts, he said, with recognizing the importance of clean air and clean water.
“The reality is we need both clean air and clean water to survive,” he said. “The more we diminish that, and the more our actions diminish that, well, the consequences are somewhat predictable. And they’re not good.”
And many already are undeniable, such as recent climate disasters from Hurricane Helene’s aftermath in Asheville, N.C., and the wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Last year there were 27 climate disasters in the U.S. in which the damages and costs exceeded $1 billion for each, resulting in 568 deaths and totaling more than $185 billion in destruction.
Hope for the earth: Even so, there is a growing realization and support, Roberts said, of the need for clean energy infrastructure and other climate projects, in particular those approved during the Biden administration as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
A recent survey found that more than half of Americans oppose the exit from the Paris accords and the rollback of clean energy projects; with 57 percent opposing the cancellation of new wind energy generation and 53 opposed to pauses of the Biden administration’s work to fund clean energy and pollution reduction, according to ecoAmerica. At the same time, 61 percent in that poll opposed an increase in oil and gas drilling operations.
At the same time, the increasing affordability of clean energy sources, such as wind, solar and battery storage, are making those technologies economically ludicrous to refuse as an alternative to fossil fuels. Texas, in fact, is estimated to have installed some 42,000 megawatts of wind power, 22,000 MW of solar and 6,500 MW of battery capacity as of the end of 2024, 80 percent more capacity than that in the next largest state.
Old men and trees: Roberts points to the Greek proverb that “a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit,” an understanding of long-term investments and the need to work for the benefit of future generations.
Earth Day, even amid discouraging events, can be a occasion for that brand of optimism.
“When you plant a tree, you don’t expect to see it run its course of life. You do so because you expect it to do something worthwhile,” he said. “I’m ever the optimist. I do think that can happen. And I’ve also seen situations where the politics have changed radically and quickly.”
What better way to celebrate Earth Day than to plant those trees.
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