November in Boston brought less chilly breezes and cloudy days than usual this year. Temperatures reached 80 degrees. Locals enjoyed the pleasant sunny days, trying to ignore the reality of what a temperate November means. The smell of smoke lingers from nearby wildfires in the state’s second driest fall on record.
The effects of global warming are apparent across the country. Hurricanes Milton and Helene have devastated the southern United States. Wildfires flick across dry areas from coast to coast. Ocean levels continue to rise.
In the election, voters dismissed the strange weather patterns running rampant across the country. One side offered concrete plans for the future of climate change in our country, and the winning side offered plans to remove the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement.
When President-elect Donald Trump first withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017, companies sold flimsy solutions to please their customers, who were rightfully upset by environmental damage. As more companies switched to green marketing to oversell their band-aid fixes, it satisfied the public’s craving for change. Most people moved on.
After Trump’s first presidency, the United States made strides in clean energy. The progress made was historic, but sadly, two years in the right direction isn’t enough. When Trump is inaugurated, all that work vanishes.
Trump campaigned on the promise to rescind any unspent funds from the historic Inflation Reduction Act. After winning the election, he nominated former Congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
The League of Conservation Voters, an environmental activist group, reported that Zeldin voted in favor of environmental policies 14% of the time. How can someone with such disregard for the environment serve as the head of its protection agency? Slowly, everything climate activists have worked towards will be lost. Thousands of hours put into fighting global warming dissolved in the first days of Trump’s second administration.
Where does that leave us — people experiencing the effects of global warming firsthand? Where does it leave the disaster-stricken states like Florida and North Carolina? Once again, Americans’ well-beings must suffer at the whims of Trump.
For the last six years, people of the United States fought to make our voices heard regarding climate change and several other causes plaguing citizens. At this point, we are tired of fighting. It would be so much easier to have a president who cared about the well-being of American citizens, but that is not the reality.
However difficult this reality is to accept, we must keep pushing forward. Democracy was built on the backs of hardworking American people. We must keep pushing to make our voices heard. Even if it’s not the president, someone is listening. Eventually our voices will be heard, and environmental justice will persevere.
So, what do we do at this moment? We don’t stop fighting.
This article appeared in print on Page 9 of Vol. LVIII Issue VII, published Nov. 18, 2024.
