CLIMATE CHANGE

New course on climate change

Donald Trump has made some major waves since entering the White House, promising to radically change the direction of both domestic and foreign policy. Climate change and environmental regulation is one area where he intends to chart a significantly different course to the previous administration...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) in the US is world renowned for its space exploration programme, but alongside its work in aerospace research, it is also deeply involved in climate change research. Like much else, that’s all set to change with the incoming US Republican administration, which has signalled a significant change in Nasa’s core purpose.

“We see Nasa in an exploration role, in deep space research,” Trump campaign adviser Bob Walker told the Guardian in November, during the transition period. “Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission. My guess is that it would be difficult to stop all ongoing Nasa programs, but future programs should definitely be placed with other agencies.”

This would represent a significant shift from the Obama administration, which placed great emphasis on climate change, playing a major role on the international stage and providing support for research. The US signed the Paris Agreement on dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, mitigation, adaptation and finance, which entered into force on 4 November.

The new President has taken a significantly more sceptical point of view on climate change however, and now that he’s taken office, he’s set to radically change the direction of US policy. The new President could potentially sack staff at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and limit funding, while there’s still a level of uncertainty over the future of several research programs.

Climate change

A great deal of research attention has centred on climate change over the last three decades, since Nasa scientist James Hansen’s dramatic evidence to a congressional committee in 1988. “The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now,” he told the committee at the time, evidence which greatly heightened public awareness of climate change.

The man himself has published further research over the intervening years, and his 2016 paper in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics made more precise predictions about the evolution of the global climate. The paper warned that without a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels were likely to rise significantly over the next 50-150 years.

This forecast is the result of detailed study, combining numerical simulations, paleoclimate data and modern observations to build a more detailed picture of the effects of ice melt from Antarctica and Greenland. Continued high emissions are predicted to have dramatic consequences, including warming of the ice shelves and increasingly powerful storms.

The current incumbent in the White House seems likely to prioritise the domestic economy over taking long-term action on climate change however. While he’s softened his tone somewhat over the last few years, rowing back from his earlier assertion that climate change was a ‘Chinese hoax’, he and his cabinet have still expressed doubt about the extent of human influence over climate change.

This extends to advocating major reforms at the EPA, which was established in 1970 under President Nixon in response to growing concern about the impact of human activity on the environment. Its website states its purpose as being to ensure that; ‘all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment where they live, learn and work.’

The EPA enforces environmental regulations, based on the available scientific information, with the agency itself deeply engaged in research and development. Existing regulations are informed by continued research into the environment, with EPA offices, laboratories and research centres located across the country.

The agency has since come under attack however, with Myron Ebell, a former adviser to President Trump’s EPA transition team, calling for the regulator to be significantly overhauled. “They’ve really gotten away with murder in misusing science and justifying regulations on the basis of junk science,” he argued.

Currently working as director of Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Ebell believes the original goals of the EPA have been achieved, and that the workforce should be reduced, from the current 15,000 down to around 5,000. “If the Trump administration is serious about keeping Trump’s promises, they will have to reform the use of science,” he said.

EPA research

The EPA is involved in research across a range of topics, including bed bugs, the regulation of chemicals and toxins, and the use of landfill sites, yet it is its role with respect to climate change that has attracted particular attention. Researchers collect data and aim to promote a clean energy economy, in line with wider goals around mitigating the impact of climate change.

The site currently states that climate change is happening and the earth is warming. It states that the average global temperature rose by 1.5º F over the past century, and is projected to rise by between another 0.5º F-8.6º F over the next hundred years, with potentially serious consequences for human health and natural ecosystems.

This is not believed to be purely a function of natural historical fluctuations in the earth’s climate either, with researchers attributing a large degree of the responsibility for climate change to human activity. According to the EPA website, human activities have released large amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, causing it to warm up.

This process may have pre-dated even the industrial revolution, with agricultural activities contributing to increased levels of methane in the atmosphere, although it is thought to have accelerated significantly since the latter part of the eighteenth

Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission. My guess is that it would be difficult to stop all ongoing Nasa programs, but future programs should definitely be placed with other agencies

century. Industrial activities are thought to have increased the greenhouse effect and caused the earth’s surface to warm.

The major economies around the world still emit huge quantities of greenhouse gases, despite efforts to reduce emissions. The US as a whole released 6,870 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalents in 2014, with over half of emissions from electricity and transportation, representing a 7 percent increase over the 1990 figure.

This doesn’t give the whole picture however, as emissions have actually decreased by 7 percent since 2005. There are a number of factors to consider here, not least the financial crash of 2008 which led to a marked economic slow-down, yet the national economy has since recovered, and the US remains a major emitter of greenhouse gases.

The effects of these wider trends are already being felt in the US, according to the EPA website, which includes detailed breakdowns of the impact of climate change on specific regions. It states that temperatures have increased by 2º F over the last century, while also pointing to the increased strain on water resources as a result of climate change.

These viewpoints are widely accepted among the scientific research community, yet many key members of the Trump administration have expressed scepticism about the prevailing views on climate change, and question the basis on which the EPA enforces environmental regulation. Ebell suggested that the science behind many environmental regulations needs to be looked at again.

“The way to clear the air about what the EPA is doing – and what the state of our environment is – is to reform the use of science so they have to use publicly available studies that can be replicated, that can be criticised,” said Ebell. “Then we’ll find out if the condition of the environment is a whole lot better than we’ve been told.”

The EPAs regulations have been blamed in some quarters for a decline in American manufacturing and the loss of jobs overseas. The wider picture in this is Trump’s oft-repeated promise to revitalise American industry and manufacturing, bringing jobs back to the ‘rust belt’ states in particular, which backed him in November’s General election.

The ‘rust belt’ states, including Pennsylvannia, Ohio and Indiana, were once the industrial heartland of America, yet they have experienced a marked economic decline over the last half century or so, due to a variety of factors. Trump’s electoral success in the region was attributed in large part to his support among blue-collar workers, attracted by his goal of reinvigorating the US economy.

Can Trump dig coal?

This includes stimulating traditional industries in areas that had long felt neglected by government.

“I’m thinking about the miners all over this country,” he said during a campaign stop in West Virginia. “We’re gonna put the miners back to work. We’re gonna put the miners back to work. We’re gonna get those mines open.”

Is this possible? While ‘Trump digs coal’ may have been a popular refrain on the campaign trail, others have their doubts; “It’s very, very, very unlikely that he could do something to get coal back to where it was seven years ago,” said John Deskins, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

A large part of the reason behind this is economic - coal production in West Virginia peaked in 2008 at 158 million short tonnes, yet it’s been declining since, to a point where production in 2016 was expected to be as low as between 80-90 million tonnes. Alternative sources of energy have emerged, in particular hydraulic fracturing, which has helped bring down the overall cost of energy.

The difficulty of extracting coal in West Virginia is another major consideration, along with the impact of foreign competition. The cost of extracting coal in the Eastern part of the US is rising, as its veins are thinner than those in Western states like Wyoming, where the coal is closer to the surface and hence easier to extract.

The combined impact of these trends has had a detrimental impact on the traditional coal mining industry in the rust belt states, a decline which President Trump now aims to reverse. The new President plans to rearrange domestic energy and power priorities, opening up federal land to coal mining and eliminating what he views as unnecessary regulations.

This might include scrapping proposed regulations for tighter methane controls on domestic drillers for example, while also reining in President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a policy aimed at combatting global warming. “The Clean Power Plan will die a slow death,” predicted Stephen Brown, vie-president of Government Relations for the oil refiner Tesnoro.

The prospect has been enthusiastically welcomed by oil industry executives, who are expected to form a significant part of the Trump administration, and are likely to exert a major influence on policy. New Secretary of State Rex Tillerson worked at ExxonMobil for over 40 years, while other cabinet picks also have close ties to the oil industry.

The reaction among the environmental community to the plans of the incoming administration are rather less positive. “We’re feeling angry and sad and contemplative,” said Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, a major US grassroots environmental organisation with more than two million members and supporters.

This could quickly be translated into action however, building on previous experience of scrutinising the actions of a President perceived to be prioritising economic considerations over longterm action on the climate. In 2000 George Bush was elected as President, and the environmental community swung into action.

“Sixteen years ago when faced with the election of President Bush, the environmental community utilized the courts, the Senate filibuster, watch-dogged political appointees and galvanized the public to take action,” wrote Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth, in an e-mail. He went on to advocate similar action today.

“We will have to take these same actions against a President Trump to protect the gains that the American people want for clean air and clean water. After the fights to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, the fights to ban fracking and the successful efforts to shut down power plants, the environmental movement is stronger than we have ever been,” he wrote.