Too few people are talking about the weather — or the environment — but everyone should be doing something about it.
In the November election, the environment and climate appeared to take a backseat to the economy and social issues.
But changes in weather, along with other environmental issues, pose severe threats that will get only worse without sustained and dedicated action. Already, the world is seeing more deadly heat waves, stronger wildfires, worsening drought, record-breaking rainfall and more severe and frequent storms.
The incoming Congress and second Trump administration in Washington are signaling they have little interest in addressing biodiversity loss, air and water pollution, deforestation, plastic pollution, rising sea levels and climate change, which threatens to render parts of the Earth uninhabitable in coming decades. That leaves the job to others.
As Brett Chase and Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco reported in the Sun-Times Saturday, Lee Zeldin, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, supports an agenda of drilling for more oil and natural gas, burning more coal, reversing climate policies, ending environmental justice initiatives and allowing more pollution — to create, he and Trump believe, more economic prosperity through “energy dominance.”
Zeldin has promised to roll back environmental regulations during Trump’s first 100 days in office. That foreshadows a repeat what happened during Trump’s first term, when staffing and oversight out of the EPA’s Chicago region office fell sharply.
How Illinois can respond
In response, environmentalists in Illinois are working to make the Legislature’s January lame-duck session — held before newly elected legislators are sworn in — a busy time. Among their initiatives are copying federal environmental standards into state law so that they remain in place even if Washington weakens or eliminates some of those rules. Many regulations in Illinois are pegged to federal standards, so if the federal government cuts back its requirements on such things as air pollution and water discharge standards, it would automatically affect Illinois. The Legislature should codify existing rules into state law so that won’t happen.
Also up for the lame-duck session are proposals backed by the Clean Jobs Coalition for improving energy conservation and writing new rules for the power sector to make it more climate friendly. There also will be legislation to support the construction of large electrical battery storage facilities that can store electricity from peak solar and wind generation and make it available when needed.
Yet another bill would encourage the construction of high-voltage transmission lines to connect clean energy generation facilities to the power grid and distribute the power where it is needed. That’s an important part of any effort to shift to clean energy.
Those measures deserve support from lawmakers. So does improving public transit, which can help reduce pollution from the transportation sector.
A report published Thursday by the organization Climate Action Tracker found that governments around the world have made little progress over the past year in reducing the emissions of the greenhouse gases that are altering the Earth’s climate. In fact, the planet is on a path to become 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, Climate Action Tracker reported, well above the limit policymakers have hoped the world can stay below.
Complicating temperature reduction efforts is that while renewable energy is booming — a good sign — energy demand also is soaring, which keeps natural gas and coal-generated plants pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
From January through September, the Earth’s average surface air temperature was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times. Countries agreed at the 2015 climate talks in Paris to keep the increase below 1.5 degrees Celsius, a hope that is fading. The United States pulled out of that agreement under former President Donald Trump and rejoined under President Joe Biden. Environmentalists fear the Trump adminisitration will pull the United States out again.
Going above the 1.5 degree level might be temporary, but the year 2024 is on track to be the hottest on record, the World Meteorological Organization reported earlier this month. The past decade has been the warmest since record-keeping started.
As we have written before, among the reasons Illinois is vulnerable to climate change are its status as an agricultural state that depends on reliable weather — higher temperatures can cause deadlier heat waves and low ice coverage on the Great Lakes can harm fish and erode Illinois’ shoreline, including Chicago’s.
In Illinois and the nation, progress has been made to help keep global temperatures from soaring farther into the danger zone. Now is no time to get cold feet.
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