Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Dear Editor,

Noise. The first weeks of the Trump administration are noise, distraction, chaos. For environmental activists, its been a steady rollback of policies designed to stabilize the climate and preserve a livable future for the next generation. Make sure to focus on the signal in all that static.

Static: on Friday February 7, President Trump tweeted (X'ed?) about removing the plastic straw 'ban' in the federal government; on his first day in office, he promised to 'unleash American energy'. These types of statements are designed to fuel uproar with little teeth behind them; the amount of plastic pollution from straws, while unsightly, is a drop in the bucket compared to other sources. Unleashing American energy would require energy producers to shift methane extraction and processing into overdrive, which most have shown little incentive to do so, as the easiest reserves are already tapped, energy prices largely flat, and new tariffs making fossil fuel exports less tenable.

Signal: Trump withdrawing the US from the Paris Accords; Trump freezing NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) funding. Pulling the US out of the Paris Accords lowers our global climate standing, allowing other countries already realizing the value of renewables and climate finance to step into the gap, while also allowing shadier actors a cover for continuing dirty environmental deeds. Freezing NEVI money slows the necessary rollout of the infrastructure required to make EVs ever more viable, locking us into further fossil-fuel transportation emissions for years to come.

Keep your eyes on the prize, and fight the battles you're able. Save your environmental strength for state and local actions to preserve the planet we hold dear.

Sincerely,

Nathan Dombeck

Janesville, WI