CQ Reader – Chapter 4 Response

It’s terrible and disheartening that money takes precedence over even one of the most pressing issues of our time—climate change. The main takeaway that I got from this chapter on air pollution and climate change was that energy businesses are more concerned with maintaining their wealth than making the planet more livable and saving lives. Perhaps the most nonsensical argument I read in this entire chapter was the following: “Market forces, not the government, do the best job of picking winners and losers in the energy sector.” The audacity of the opponents of the Clean Power Plan to choose capitalism over the fact that pollution is deadly and must be regulated is unbelievable.

In addition, although lawmakers from states whose economies depend on coal mining and other forms of non renewable energy argue that making the switch to renewable energy would create unemployment and higher energy bills for the public, they fail to realize that there are ways to remedy these problems—however, there is no way to remedy the damage that is being done to our ozone layer, and much more harm can come to us from that than from unemployment or higher bills.

The fact that we are experiencing 60-degree weather in New York in February is not a blessing. It is a sign that there is something seriously wrong with the planet. Yet, Trump and his administration are trying to maintain that climate change doesn’t exist, despite the innumerable amount of scientific evidence that proves that it does. It is perfectly normal and acceptable for people to have opinions, but the issue of climate change is not a matter of opinion. It is even worse that the people who are promoting these fallacies are the ones with the power to disregard policies that benefit the planet. In the short time that Trump has been president, he has appointed a nonbeliever of climate change to the head of the EPA, signed off on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, and pledged to get rid of the Clean Power Plan. We are receding into dangerous territory and putting all of our lives in danger for the power of the almighty dollar.