By Holly Williams
Elm Staff Writer
Amid the noisy rhetoric of this election season, one fact should remain an unequivocal concern on all political agendas: The environment is rapidly changing for the worse.
Recently, sperm whales have been spotted as far north as the Canadian Arctic. Their altered migration patterns are a sign of a warming ecosystem, as sperm whales are physiologically unable to navigate colder waters.
The extended range of sperm whales isn’t the first disruption that’s been evident in wildlife. It’s just one event that heralds changing times.
Globally, climate change is driving species towards evolution or extinction. The World Wildlife Fund reported that 60 percent of animal species have been wiped out since 1970. This loss isn’t only because of climate change, but a consequence of many actions that lead to extinction, like overfishing, deforestation, pollution, and habitat loss.
The U.N.’s direst estimations predict that we only have until 2030 before global temperatures rise 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial temperatures — an irreversible change.
These figures aren’t fringe science or lacking peer review. An expansive study of 10,306 climate scientists found that 97 percent agree global warming is a real phenomenon influenced by human activity.
The consensus on this is as strong as the relationship between smoking and lung cancer. The government heavily regulates tobacco. Laws dictate how tobacco is made, advertised, and distributed.
Perhaps we can look at the Paris Climate Agreement or the Environmental Protection Agency as the environmental equivalents of big tobacco sanctions. Unfortunately, the U.S. has exited the Paris accords.
Under our new administration, the EPA has faced rollbacks of federal environmental regulations. Among many, some of the directives affected involved carbon emissions, arctic drilling, and monitoring methane leaks. Sections of the EPA’s website that formerly discussed climate change were edited or removed.
Some would say that climate change policies are a hard sell because the effects are unseen in one’s lifetime. Immediate wants or comforts will be priority over long-term and sometimes inconvenient planning. Unlike cancer, which progresses in a lifetime, climate change is seen as a problem for the next generation, but we are that next generation.
You only need to pay a little attention to see its effects. The ecosystem is rapidly changing as it loses biomass and biodiversity. Natural disasters are growing in their intensity and frequency. Drought, floods, hurricanes, and fires are wreaking havoc on an upward trend.
The schism between scientific understanding and political action for climate change is unprecedented.
Why should politics selectively enforce incontrovertible science? There has always been pushback on how to solve climate issues, mainly due to the economic costs of regulations. However, there has been a departure from even addressing the issue at all. 2018 is the second year in a row that the annual presidential memo to science agencies has not mentioned climate research as a common goal. It was first designated as a priority during the second Bush administration.
At its heart, disbelief and disinterest isn’t partisan — most Republicans, Democrats, and Independents agree that human-caused climate change exists. Both John McCain and Barack Obama were advocates for the environment during the 2008 election. A study from Yale shows that public concern over climate change is at an all-time high. The same study shows that most Americans favor clean energy sources.
Yet, the actions of lawmakers have not reached this same level of solidarity. As the country becomes increasingly divided by ideology, we become more estranged from fact. We face a worsening threat that should unite us, and yet, the debate has grown polarized.
We should not remain comfortable with the way things are or how they are progressing. Don’t let the years we have until the damage is irreversible instill a sense of complacency. Demand both parties act as allies of science.