March, 27 2017, 10:00am EDT
Anticipated Trump Executive Order Will Ignore Science on Climate Change, Endanger Americans
Statement by Ken Kimmell, President, Union of Concerned Scientists
WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order on Tuesday to severely curtail actions by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies to address climate change. The order directs the agency to rewrite the Clean Power Plan, the nation's first-ever limits on global warming emissions from power plants, and eviscerates other key strategies that have been put in place to address climate change, improve public health, and safeguard citizens against the growing costs of climate change impacts.
Below is a statement by Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Kimmell is a former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and chair of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the nation's first cap-and-trade program to cut carbon pollution from power plants.
"The wrecking ball that is the Trump presidency continues. Dismantling existing EPA programs and policies isn't a plan--it's an abdication. Seas are rising, droughts are becoming more commonplace, the Mountain West's wildfire season is getting longer and we're seeing more record-breaking temperatures. The fingerprints of climate change are everywhere, threatening Americans' health, safety and pocketbooks.
"The EPA has a legal obligation under the Clean Air Act to curtail global warming emissions to help limit the impacts of climate change. The Clean Power Plan cost-effectively addresses one of the nation's largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions--power plants--and gives states the flexibility to tailor the plan to their needs.
"The executive order undercuts a key part of the nation's response to climate change, without offering even a hint of what will replace it. The order includes other foolish and short-sighted policy changes, like eliminating a requirement for federal agencies to factor in climate change when issuing permits for large construction projects and taking into account the social cost of carbon in cost-benefit assessments of federal rules. It also repeals common sense measures like the federal flood risk management standard and agency support for state, tribal and local government efforts to protect and prepare communities for climate change. Climate change risks have to be factored into the equation to ensure people are safer and taxpayer funds are wisely invested. Today's executive order follows on the heels of a recent announcement that EPA will re-open the vehicle emissions standards, with the goal of weakening or eliminating them.
"We estimate the cumulative effect of repealing the Clean Power Plan and the vehicle standards will be a 9 percent increase in energy-related emissions in 2030, or 439 million metric tons. That means emissions will go up in the U.S., just when the rest of the world is transitioning to a cleaner, healthier economy.
"This is terribly irresponsible. But it won't alter the scientific reality--that climate change is real, already happening, caused by burning fossil fuels, and requires immediate action to limit its worst impacts."
FACT CHECK: It is also important to note that dismantling the Clean Power Plan will do nothing to make the U.S. more energy independent--a claim made by President Trump. The U.S. produces nearly all of its electricity from domestic sources, with a minuscule portion from Canada. In contrast, about one-quarter of U.S. oil is imported. The most effective strategy to cut U.S oil imports is cutting oil use, by accelerating recent progress making cars and trucks more fuel efficient.
FACT CHECK: Tomorrow's expected action also won't overturn the market forces putting pressure on the coal industry and does nothing to provide coal communities with the transition assistance they need and have been requesting.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.
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Officials at the international biodiversity conference that began in October were forced on Saturday to suspend talks without reaching an agreement on a key issue of the summit—a detailed finance plan for a dedicated biodiversity fund—after the meeting went into overtime and delegates began leaving.
The failure to reach an agreement on biodiversity finance was denounced by the head of environmental group Greenpeace's delegation at the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which took place over two weeks in Cali, Colombia.
"Governments in Cali put forward plans to protect nature but were unable to mobilize the money to actually do it," said An Lambrechts. "Biodiversity finance remains stalled after a deafening absence of credible finance pledges from wealthy governments and unprecedented corporate lobbying... Closing the finance gap was not merely some moral obligation but necessary to the protection of people and nature that grows more urgent each day."
Lambrechts added that with international leaders now preparing to attend the 2024 U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan this month, "the non-decision on a fund damages trust between Global South and North countries."
The conference was aimed at ramping up progress toward meeting goals set by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in Canada in 2022. That framework calls for the protection of 30% of land and sea areas and the restoration of 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.
In Canada, delegations also agreed to phase out subsidies that are harmful to nature and to provide $200 billion per year for the protection of biodiversity by 2030, including $30 billion per year that would be transferred from rich to poor countries. A larger goal of ultimately generating $700 billion to protect nature was also part of the agreement.
About $15 billion was transferred in 2022, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and nations have pledged about $400 million to a Global Biodiversity Framework Fund.
But in Cali in recent days, Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad offered a draft proposal for the establishment of a dedicated biodiversity fund—a priority for developing nations at the conference—only to have delegations including those from the European Union, Switzerland, and Japan reject the proposal.
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The Forests & Finance Coalition—which includes Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), and Friends of the Earth U.S., among others—called the result of finance discussions at the meeting "disappointing."
"This latest development makes it all the more critical that banks and investors are stopped from financing destructive sectors that continue to drive nature loss and human rights abuses," said Tom Picken, RAN's forests and finance director.
Lambrechts acknowledged that "big pharma and big agribusiness failed to block a game-changing deal on corporate responsibility to pay up for nature protections."
COP16 delegates devised a plan to create a fund that would share the profits generated from digitally sequenced genetic data taken from plants and animals with the communities—mostly in the Global South—that the species come from.
Companies that make money from cosmetics, medicines, and other products that use digitally sequenced genetic data would pay into the fund, but the final agreement made participation voluntary, saying only that companies "should" contribute.
Indigenous delegates celebrated the creation of a permanent body within the CBD to represent the interests of Indigenous groups—a "historic victory," according to Leila Salazar-López, executive director of the nonprofit Amazon Watch.
A work plan was approved by the convention to expand the role of Indigenous people, local communities, and Afro-descendant people in the protection of biodiversity.
"Thanks to this new body and work plan approval, future COPs will work, amongst many other important issues, on land tenure, traditional knowledge and governance by Indigenous Peoples," said Isaac Rojas, forests and biodiversity coordinator for Friends of the Earth International (FOE). "It's a milestone in the struggle of Indigenous peoples for their rights. We congratulate them and share their joy following this win. But we have to remain vigilant, because these achievements may turn out to be empty words in view of the push for several false solutions."
FOE warned that false solutions, particularly biodiversity offsetting, were pushed heavily by corporations at the conference.
Corporate interests called for biodiversity credits—"tradeable assets intended to represent 'measurable outcomes'—such as protecting or restoring certain species or ecosystems, or parts of them," according to FOE. "Similar to carbon credits, they allow corporations to buy and sell these, to meet regulations or voluntary sustainability claims."
Nele Marien, forests and biodiversity co-coordinator for FOE, said Saturday that "corporations were here pushing very hard for all kinds of false solutions, for example on biodiversity offsetting, which had a lot of traction."
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A spokesperson for the CBD, David Ainsworth, told reporters that the conference would resume at a later date.
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The congresswoman was referring to an interview by Luke Radel, a student journalist at Syracuse University, who asked Johnson (R-La.) about Trump's recent comments that the CHIPS and Science Act is "so bad."
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The exchange grew increasingly awkward as Radel asked Williams whether he would vote to repeal the legislation, signed by President Joe Biden in 2022, that Micron has said will create 50,000 semiconductor manufacturing jobs in the Syracuse area.
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The Charleston Post and Courierreported that Moore was pronounced dead at 6:24 pm local time, 21 minutes after the lethal injection was administered.
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Moore, 59, was convicted of the 1999 murder of convenience store clerk James Mahoney. Moore—who was unarmed when he entered the store—argued that he shot Mahoney in self-defense after the clerk pulled out a gun during an argument over correct change. An all-white jury found Moore guilty of murder and armed robbery.
"This is definitely part of my life I wish I could change. I took a life. I took someone's life. I broke the family of the deceased," Moore said in a video accompanying his clemency petition. "I pray for the forgiveness of that particular family."
Death penalty opponents said Moore's case underscores capital punishment's literally fatal flaws.
"Richard Moore's case, like those of so many others on death row, was tainted with racial bias, including as the two prospective Black jurors were peremptorily dismissed, resulting in an all-white jury," Amnesty International USA researcher Justin Mazzola said in a statement after the execution.
"In addition to the racial bias, the crime that Moore committed was not premeditated, which raised serious concerns as to whether it rose to the level for which the death penalty is reserved in U.S. constitutional law," Mazzola added. "It's shameful that racial bias and lack of premeditation were not enough to convince Gov. McMaster to grant clemency to Richard Moore. Gov. McMaster could have used his clemency power instead of overseeing yet another execution in his state."
Moore was initially forced to choose whether he would be killed by electric chair or firing squad following the 2021 passage by South Carolina's Republican-led Legislature of a new capital punishment law amid a shortage of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital. Moore chose the firing squad.
In 2022, the South Carolina Supreme Court temporarily stayed Moore's execution. He subsequently changed his choice of execution method after the state restocked pentobarbital.
Advocates for Moore pointed to his flawless prison behavior and mentorship to other inmates. Among those urging clemency for Moore were Retired Circuit Court Judge Gary Clary, who sentenced Moore to die.
"Over the years I have studied the case of each person who resides on death row in South Carolina," Clary wrote to McMaster on Tuesday. "Richard Bernard Moore's case is unique, and after years of thought and reflection, I humbly ask that you grant executive clemency to Mr. Moore as an act of grace and mercy."
Jon Ozmint, director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) from 2003 to 2011, wrote, that that Moore "has proven himself to be a reliable, consistent force for good on death row."
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Moore is the second person executed in South Carolina since it resumed executions. In September, the state killed 46-year-old Freddie Owens. Four more South Carolina death row inmates have exhausted their appeals. They are likely to be executed in the coming months.
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