California suffering through driest three years ever recorded, with no relief in sight.
In 2010, a severe drought followed by a fire forced residents of the Central Valley to take to their roofs to collect water from their taps. On Christmas Day, firefighters battled several blazes which destroyed hundreds of homes in Los Angeles and San Bernardino.
Nearly two months later, President Obama issued an Executive Order on Climate and National Environmental Policy for the United States of America, seeking to promote green energy and energy efficiency technologies and promote low carbon development. He declared federal assistance in the form of loans, grants and investment funds available for the development of new technologies that lower energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
But President Trump has taken a different approach.
Instead of promoting clean energy and addressing climate change, he is withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
“There’s no scientific consensus that human activity is the dominant cause of the observed global warming trends,” said John Cook, senior scientist and deputy director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “The only certainty is there’s no question.”
The climate change issue isn’t going away. No amount of international agreements or regulatory standards is going to alter the natural climate cycle.
But even if it did, Cook said, “I would have said 10 years ago that we could still count on a continuing warming trend.”
Last week, the U.S. Senate refused to hold a vote on President Trump’s budget, which slashes spending on research for renewable and alternative energy sources, climate change research and the agency that oversees the National Park Service — all while claiming there is a need for an infrastructure bill.
The Trump budget is also cutting funds for the Department of Energy, which includes the Energy Department, which is responsible for the renewable energy, climate change and nuclear energy.
The Trump budget could soon be headed to the White House for his signature.
President Trump’s budget is a “major, major attack on science,” said Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist and director of the Climate Institute at Scripp