Ignoring climate change doesn’t make it go away
But it does make it worse for everyone.
Ignorance is bliss. Nowhere is that truer than in the White House’s approach to climate change. Rather than address the problem of climate change, the Trump Administration is scrubbing climate from its policy altogether.
In recent weeks, the White House has:
Ended NOAA’s extreme weather database, which tracks the costs of climate-fueled disasters.
Directed federal agencies to stop considering economic damage caused by climate change.
Dismissed nearly 400 authors in charge of the National Climate Assessment, which prepares governments for climate impacts.
Gutted research funding from NASA, NSF, and the Department of Energy.
Such moves are convenient: Climate change is really expensive, and pretending it doesn't exist saves a lot of money. But they’re also nefarious: By eliminating positions responsible for collecting and analyzing climate data, the administration is throwing out one of the biggest tools for fighting climate change.
As the saying goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And if enough climate data is wiped, those who want to do something about climate won’t have the numbers to back it up.
Of course, like most moves by this White House, zagging when all scientists are zigging doesn't always make you clever — sometimes it just makes you wrong.
It reminds me of this satirical headline: “If We’re Going To Ignore Years of Medical Research, We Should at Least Make Cigarettes Healthy Again.” If climate change doesn't exist and vaccines are dangerous, the author argues, why are we still pretending cigarettes are bad?
Though these moves are flagrant examples of an administration that has long ignored basic climate science and the impacts of climate change, they follow a long-standing tactic by Republicans to avoid talking about climate in general.
For example, last year Florida passed a law that removed “climate change” from state laws.
The irony, of course, is that the low-lying, hurricane-prone Florida is a poster child for climate change.
To get around this inconvenient truth, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has long portrayed himself as an environmentalist, advancing conservation and resilience efforts, while expanding fossil fuel use and slashing climate initiatives.
Genevieve Guenther sums up DeSantis and others’ strategy in her book The Language of Climate Politics:
“Highlighting the term ‘resilience’ can even enable right-wing policymakers to adopt the presence of taking climate action while never linking weather threats to the fossil-fuel economy, which these policymakers, of course, continue to support.”
Ignoring climate change altogether is just one move in a larger strategy to deregulate the environment — a strategy that will make it worse for everyone:
Less weather forecasting and modeling will put more people in harm’s way. Clean air exemptions for fossil fuel companies will make more people sick. And I don’t even know what looser rules for toxic ash and mercury dumping will do, but I bet it’s not good.
Words have power. And even an administration that abandons the truth, stokes our fears, and plays to our worst qualities knows that numbers don’t lie.
The White House is not simply putting their head in the sand to avoid a climate-fueled hurricane; they’re shrugging it off as an act of nature, while simultaneously shredding all the research that says otherwise.