campaign 2016
The Trump administration's war on science.
Mr. Trump’s inaugural budget blueprint is a narrow-minded document that sacrifices American innovation to small-bore politics.
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMARCH 27, 2017
“Think of the marvels we can achieve if we simply set free the dreams of our people,” President Trump said in his speech to Congress last month, after summoning a list of technological triumphs from America’s past. “Cures to illnesses that have always plagued us,” and “American footprints on distant worlds.”
Against those lofty promises, his first budget blueprint is a cramped document that sacrifices American innovation to small-bore politics, shortchanging basic scientific research across the government — from NASA to the Department of Energy to the National Institutes of Health — in ways that can only stifle invention and undercut the nation’s competitiveness. Meanwhile, more than 40 top government science positions, including that of presidential science adviser, remain vacant.
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Sources: American Association for the Advancement of Science; Ardesheer Talati, Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute
By The New York Times
Some research cuts, particularly to the N.I.H., aren’t likely to make it past Congress. But they show Mr. Trump’s lack of understanding of science’s role in national and domestic security, in protecting air and water and other resources and in preventing disease and lowering the cost of health care, which consumes one-quarter of the $3.7 trillion federal budget.
Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and biomedical research investor who is one of Mr. Trump’s few supporters in Silicon Valley, is an outspoken advocate for government-fostered science. A week before the election, he said: “Voters are tired of hearing conservative politicians say that government never works. They know the government wasn’t always this broken. The Manhattan Project, the Interstate Highway System, and the Apollo program — whatever you think of these ventures, you cannot doubt the competence of the government that got them done. But we have fallen very far from that standard, and we cannot let free market ideology serve as an excuse for decline.”
That, however, is exactly what Mr. Trump’s budget does. In service to small-government ideology, it proposes to whack 18 percent from the N.I.H.’s budget, and even more from the Department of Energy and the E.P.A.’s science programs. A $250 million annual grant program administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “supporting coastal and marine management, research and education” would be killed, including programs that provide important resources to help coastal states prepare for the coming effects of climate change (no surprise there, since Mr. Trump doesn’t believe in climate change). The earth sciences division at NASA comes in for a 6 percent cut; other reductions take aim at the United States Geological Survey and the National Science Foundation, a big player in scientific research.
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The cuts in human health programs have drawn the heaviest criticism. Mary Woolley, president of Research!America, nonprofit advocates for medical research, says Mr. Trump’s budget “doesn’t reflect the priorities of a nation committed to protecting and improving the health and well-being of its citizens.” The N.I.H.’s 27 institutes underwrite the bulk of the nation’s medical research; after hefty budget increases in the early 2000s, championed by Senator Arlen Specter, who was a Pennsylvania Republican, the economic downturn and internal turmoil have led to cuts that erased most of those gains.
Mr. Trump’s budget greatly worries medical researchers like Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Nearly 60 percent of Dr. Lieberman’s $240 million departmental budget is sponsored research, most of it underwritten by the N.I.H. “Each year we eat what we kill — there is no guaranteed recurrent revenue,” he said. “And this is true for all academic medicine.”
In its budget heyday, the N.I.H. approved about 30 percent of eligible grant applications. Since 2008, that number has fallen to 10 to 15 percent. “One would have hoped that biomedical research was spared from the political arena,” Mr. Lieberman said. Not under Mr. Trump.
A version of this editorial appears in print on March 27, 2017, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: The Administration’s War on Science. Today's Paper|Subscribe
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A grim budget day for US science: Analysis and reaction to Trump's plan.
We're detailing the numbers and what people think of them.
President Donald J. Trump
Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY SA)
A grim budget day for U.S. science: analysis and reaction to Trump's plan
By Science News StaffMar. 16, 2017 , 5:00 PM
President Donald Trump rolled out his first budget request to Congress today. It is for the 2018 fiscal year that begins on 1 October. It calls for deep cuts to some federal science agencies (read our initial coverage to get some of the numbers), and is likely to draw fierce opposition from the scientific community and many lawmakers in Congress.
ScienceInsider is providing analysis and reaction to the budget all day.
Come back to see our latest items (most recent at the top).
Trump's science vision, in a single graph
The budget released today is often scant on details, including how cuts to various science agencies will be distributed. But science budget expert Matt Hourihan of the R&D; Budget and Policy Program at AAAS (publisher of ScienceInsider) made some informed estimates of how the cuts would play out (assuming Congress approves all of the cuts, which is a big "if"). The result is this graph, which shows how select science agencies would fare:
NIH cuts could mean no new grants in 2018
The biomedical research community is reacting with shock and outrage to the Trump administration’s proposed 18% cut to the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Many are also worried about plans to reorganize the agency, in part by eliminating its institute dedicated to training scientists in developing countries.
The Trump budget would cut $5.8 billion from NIH’s current funding level of $31.7 billion in the stopgap congressional funding measure that funds most federal agencies through 28 April. That would bring its budget back to the lowest level in 15 years without taking into account biomedical inflation.
“Obviously we’re outraged. This is just unacceptable. This doesn’t make any sense. We should be investing more in biomedical research,” says Jennifer Zeitzer, director of legislative relations for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. The Association of American Medical Colleges said the cuts would “cripple the nation’s ability to support and deliver” biomedical research.
The damage could even worse than it sounds because the $25.9 billion for NIH apparently includes $496 million that NIH was slated to receive from the 21st Century Cures Act that became law in December 2016, suggests Kathy Hudson of Washington, D.C., a former NIH deputy director who left the agency in December. Cures money was once envisioned as being an add-on to the agency’s budget, not a replacement for withdrawn funding. (The Cures money has a separate funding stream that is not subject to the annual appropriations process.) NIH would also have to dig into its budget to maintain studies funded by the $334 million (in 2016) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), whose activities NIH would be expected to absorb, Hudson says.
Across NIH, because most of the agency’s budget goes to annual payments for ongoing grants, a nearly 20% cut could leave virtually no funding for new awards in fiscal year 2018, Hudson says. “The nation would lose research and researchers in a way that would not be recoverable,” Hudson says. “It is pretty terrifying.”
The Trump budget proposal also “includes a major reorganization” of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers “to help focus resources on the highest priority research and training activities,” the document says. In addition to folding AHRQ into NIH, that includes “eliminating the Fogarty International Center” at NIH.
The Fogarty is a tiny piece of NIH, funded at $70 million in 2016. But it has an outsize impact because its mission is “entirely to train people” to do research mostly in low-income countries, says bioethicist Nancy Kass of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, a Fogarty grantee.
Although the Fogarty may have come into the White House’s crosshairs because of “international” in its title, the work it does helps guard the health of Americans from emerging diseases, Kass says. “One of the best protectants is to have people in Africa trained in science and ethics who can detect, measure, and do research on a new infection,” Kass says. “They are our first eyes and ears on the ground.” The Infectious Diseases Society of America issued a statement expressing “serious concerns” about the proposal to abolish the Fogarty center.
The Trump administration is not the first to propose an NIH reorganization—in the late 1990s, former NIH Director Harold Varmus decried its sprawling array of disease-oriented institutes and called for a more streamlined structure. A 2006 law caps the number of institutes at 27 and lays out a process for adding or removing institutes. That process entails “all sorts of lengthy, time-consuming, neuron-absorbing steps,” says Hudson, who was involved in creating a translational research institute (and dismantling another). Spending committees in Congress, which allocate individual institutes’ funding, would also have to sign off on any reorganization.
But Congress, where NIH has long had bipartisan support and received substantial raises the past 2 years, is unlikely to go along with the NIH proposal, NIH watchers say. “I don't think this has any chance of getting through Congress,” Zeitzer says. She adds that perhaps the White House budget office “did us a favor” by proposing massive cuts to NIH. “If it was a small cut, it would be hard to stay outraged.” — Jocelyn Kaiser
Nevada nuclear waste dump site gets $120 million reboot
The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump site in Nevada gets a $120 million reboot on licensing for the project in the White House’s 2018 budget blueprint for the U.S. Department of Energy.
The funding would be used to “initiate a robust interim storage program,” the request says, which would demonstrate how the Trump administration will address the country’s lack of repository sites, a hindrance for existing nuclear power plants.
A disposal site on Yucca Mountain would need to hold up to 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste for up to 1 million years. A 2014 assessment from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission deemed the site environmentally safe to do so.
Billions of dollars have been spent to evaluate Yucca Mountain as disposal site for radioactive waste since the 1970s. Licensing was halted in 2010 by former President Barack Obama. The site has long faced pushback from state lawmakers, environmental groups, and local stakeholders.
The state of Nevada is officially opposed to a repository site on Yucca Mountain, according to the state’s attorney general’s office, citing “unresolved scientific issues,” space limitations, risks during transportation of waste, and national security vulnerability.
Nevada legislators from both parties fired back Thursday morning.
“As has been stated in the past, Yucca is dead and this reckless proposal will not revive it,” Senator Dean Heller (R–NV) said in a statement. “This project was ill-conceived from the beginning and has already flushed billions of taxpayer dollars down the drain.”
“This is unacceptable. Time and again, Nevadans have made it clear that we will not accept any plan to revive Yucca Mountain,” Senator Cortez Masto (D–NV), wrote in a Tweet.
The overall proposed budget for the Department of Energy took a 5.6% hit. Former Texas governor Rick Perry, the president’s energy secretary, remained cautious, but said he would not keep discussions of Yucca Mountain off the table at this senate hearing in January. — Rachael Lallensack
In mystery interior budget, USGS number came as surprise
The White House’s 2018 budget would take about 11.7% from the Department of the Interior’s (DOI’s) 2016 enacted budget, dropping it from $13.2 billion to $11.6 billion. But that one number is the only concrete clue so far to the administration’s plans for DOI. Only DOI’s U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) received a loose estimate of its 2018 budget in the blueprint released today; USGS will receive “more than 900 million”—and even that amount may have been added at the 11th hour. “As of late yesterday afternoon we didn’t even think there was a dollar amount [in the budget request], so this was a bit of a surprise for us,” says USGS spokesperson A.B. Wade.
A $900 million budget, if it is that round number, would be a 15% decrease relative to USGS’s 2016 enacted budget of $1.062 billion. The 2018 request includes funding for the ground system for Landsat 9, the joint USGS-NASA satellite program to monitor land-use changes on Earth’s surface. Other USGS funding priorities, without dollar amounts attached, include natural hazard risk reduction and “responsible resource management.” However, there are currently six programs within USGS’ Natural Hazards Mission Area, focusing on risks from earthquakes to volcanoes. And “We’re not sure exactly what responsible resource management refers to specifically,” Wade says. Whether the cuts to USGS will include personnel is still unclear, she says, but “15% is a significant hit.”
For other agencies and programs within DOI, details are even scarcer. More than $1 billion will go to water resources management in the western United States—likely under the aegis of the Bureau of Reclamation. The DOI budget will support “stewardship capacity” for the National Park Service (NPS), the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—but “streamlines operations.” Meanwhile, funding for the Office of Natural Resources Revenue will be sustained, the budget notes, and wildfire suppression costs, estimated based on a “10-year rolling average,” will be met in full.
One “lower priority” activity that will be cut is funding for new acquisitions of federal lands, an interest of multiple DOI agencies, including BLM, FWS, and NPS. The land acquisition budget stands to lose $120 million relative to 2016 enacted levels. Other programs on the chopping block include National Heritage Areas—many of which the White House says are more appropriately funded locally—and payments to the National Wildlife Refuge Fund that are “duplicative” of other payment programs.
Beyond that, the blueprint suggests the DOI priorities will include “environmentally responsible development of energy on public lands and offshore waters,” as well as streamlining permits and promoting energy. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, in a statement released today, expressed support for the budget—although 2 weeks ago he had told DOI employees that he would push back against the cuts. “I can say for certain that this budget allows the Interior Department to meet our core mission and also prioritizes the safety and security of the American people,” he said today. — Carolyn Gramling
National Endowment for the Humanities faces elimination
One of several organizations to have its funding eliminated completely in the 2018 budget proposal was the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). NEH, which was established in 1965 and received $148 million in 2016, provides grants supporting research, education, and outreach in the humanities and social sciences. In linguistics, for example, the Documenting Endangered Languages program, managed jointly by NEH and the National Science Foundation (NSF), has played a role in preserving and revitalizing many endangered languages.
William D. Adams, Chairman of NEH, released a statement earlier today on the agency's proposed elimination. Here are some excerpts:
We are greatly saddened to learn of this proposal for elimination, as NEH has made significant contributions to the public good over its 50-year history. But as an agency of the executive branch, we answer to the President and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Therefore, we must abide by this budget request as this initial stage of the federal budget process gets under way. …
Since its creation in 1965, NEH has established a significant record of achievement through its grant-making programs. Over these five decades, NEH has awarded more than $5.3 billion for humanities projects through more than 63,000 grants. That public investment has led to the creation of books, films, museum exhibits, and exciting discoveries. …
Through these projects and thousands of others, the National Endowment for the Humanities has inspired and supported what is best in America.
— Brice Russ
An ominously sparse FDA section
The White House has not specified the size of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) budget, but does propose a major increase in user fees, which are collected from drug and medical device companies submitting products for FDA review. The agency brought in roughly $1.3 billion—nearly a third of its budget—in medical product user fees last year.
Today’s proposal to increase those fees by $1 billion may not sound ominous in itself, but it implies an impending, equivalent cut to federal funding, says Steven Grossman, deputy executive director at the Alliance for a Stronger FDA in Washington, D.C. That’s an unrealistic expectation, he adds, because drug companies have already gone through negotiations and reached an agreement with FDA on user fee increases. (The agreed-upon number isn’t publicly available.)
The Biotech Industry Organization, also in Washington, D.C., addressed the potential shake-up in an e-mailed statement: “As regards to user fee programs, we look forward to working with the President and Congress to preserve the commitments reflected in the carefully negotiated [Prescription Drug User Fee Act] goals letter.” — Kelly Servick
Biomedical research coalition calls on Congress to block NIH cuts
United for Medical Research (UMR), a politically potent coalition of leading research universities, industry groups, and patient advocates based in Washington, D.C., isn’t happy with Trump’s proposed 20% cut to the $32 billion NIH, the nation's major funder of basic biomedical science. Here are excerpts from a statement issued by UMR President Lizbet Boroughs:
UMR is deeply troubled by the proposed $5.8 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH ) … A cut of such magnitude would have serious repercussions on medical research, jobs and the economy. It would stymie major progress toward treatment and cures of diseases, and be felt by all Americans …
NIH research fuels the pipeline of discovery and innovation necessary to prevent, treat and cure our most vexing diseases and it has a significant economic impact, supporting more than 350,000 jobs across the United States and contributing some $60 billion annually in economic activity ….
We call on the strong bipartisan Congressional supporters of NIH to reject the Administration’s drastic and unwise cuts to NIH and maintain a course of steady, sustained and predictable funding for America’s premier health agency.
NASA chief reacts: positive "overall"
NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot has put out a statement reacting to the White House budget request, which calls for a 1% cut overall to his agency, and a 5% cut to NASA’s earth science programs. “This is a positive budget overall for NASA,” he said. A few excerpts:
The President mentioned in his speech to both houses of Congress that, ‘American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream.’ NASA is already working toward that goal, and we look forward to exciting achievements that this budget will help us reach …
While the budget and appropriation process still has a long way to go, this budget enables us to continue our work with industry to enhance government capabilities, send humans deeper into space, continue our innovative aeronautics efforts and explore our universe …
The budget also bolsters our ongoing work to send humans deeper into space and the technologies that will require …
Overall science funding is stable, although some missions in development will not go forward and others will see increases. We remain committed to studying our home planet and the universe, but are reshaping our focus within the resources available to us—a budget not far from where we have been in recent years, and which enables our wide ranging science work on many fronts …
While this budget no longer funds a formal Office of Education, NASA will continue to inspire the next generation through our missions and channel education efforts in a more focused way through the robust portfolio of our Science Mission Directorate. We will also continue to use every opportunity to support the next generation through engagement in our missions and the many ways that our work encourages the public to discover more.
We remain committed to the next human missions to deep space, but we will not pursue the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) with this budget. This doesn’t mean, however, that the hard work of the teams already working on ARM will be lost. We will continue the solar electric propulsion efforts benefitting from those developments for future in space transportation initiatives. I have had personal involvement with this team and their progress for the past few years, and am I extremely proud of their efforts to advance this mission …
NSF wonders whether budget's silence is golden
At first glance, the research components of today’s 2018 budget blueprint appear to reflect Trump’s lack of attention, to date, to science and the federal research enterprise. The best example may be the budget’s silence on NSF, the federal government’s major funder of several fields of academic research.
NSF is not mentioned in the 62-page document, so it’s impossible to know what the new president thinks about its broad $7.5 billion portfolio of research and education. Presumably, the agency is one component of a single line labeled “other agencies” that is scheduled for a 10% cut. But NSF never received a “landing team” from the incoming Trump administration and had no interactions with White House budget officials as the so-called skinny budget was assembled over the past few weeks.
NSF’s support for the social sciences and its environmental and climate programs have been the target of congressional Republicans. But despite deep cuts in these areas at other agencies, NSF’s activities so far have been spared.
So is silence golden? NSF officials may not know the answer until Trump submits his full 2018 budget request to Congress in May. — Jeffrey Mervis
NOAA Sea Grant programs leads list of cuts
A little-known grant program that supports academic research to help communities adapt to climate change and manage their coastal and lakeshore resources is on the chopping block in the Trump administration's budget proposal for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The elimination of the $73 million Sea Grant program would account for the single largest chunk of the $250 million the White House wants to cut from the $5.8 billion agency, which does everything from manage weather satellites to regulate fisheries.
Sea Grant, established by Congress in 1966, supports research at 33 centers, largely on the coasts but also on the Great Lakes, involving more than 3000 scientists and 300 academic institutions. Sea Grant has also emerged as an important venue for guiding communities on their response to global warming, including regional sea level rise.
Overall, the budget proposal would reduce NOAA’s budget by 4%. Beyond Sea Grant, the cuts would target grants and programs "supporting coastal and marine management, research, and education," which are a lower priority, the budget request states, than functions maintained in the budget like "surveys, charting, and fisheries management." But the budget does not make clear what specific programs these other cuts would target, and provides no numbers for influential programs like the Office of Atmospheric Research, NOAA’s main science arm.
The proposal would retain support for NOAA's troubled $11.3 billion Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), a series of two advanced weather satellites, the first of which is set for launch late this summer, and its $11.3 billion line of four new geostationary satellites, the first of which, GOES-16, launched late last year.
The fate of two further planned polar satellites, JPSS-3 and JPSS-4, remain uncertain in the proposal, which says NOAA will obtain cost savings in the program by "better reflecting the actual risk of a gap in polar satellite coverage," along with opening up more opportunities for startup commercial weather satellites to provide data. That is likely a reference to companies like Spire Global, which has launched a series of CubeSats to collect weather data by GPS radio occultation. Congress has already pressured NOAA to sign pilot contracts with these companies.
The proposal promises to maintain the forecasting capabilities of the National Weather Service by investing "more than $1 billion," potentially in line with the service's enacted $1.1 billion in spending for the 2016 financial year.
— Paul Voosen
Environmental think tank bashes EPA, State Department cuts
The World Resources Institute (WRI), a prominent Washington, D.C.–based environmental think tank, doesn't have much good to say about the proposed 31% cut to the Enviornmental Protection Agency, 29% cut to State Department climate and aid programs, and reductions at research agencies. Here is some of what WRI's Manish Bapna, a managing director at the group, said in a statement:
The latest budget continues the administration’s shocking disregard for priorities that are critical for people’s health and the economy. The U.S. government must have the resources to protect air, water and people’s health at home. It must also have the tools to advance U.S. diplomatic and strategic interests overseas.
By slashing funding for communities most in need, the administration risks jeopardizing America’s security in strategically critical parts of the world. Funding to the State Department and USAID are essential not only for people’s well-being but also for advancing U.S. priorities in conflict-prone and fragile regions. As we face one of the worst humanitarian crises since World War II, with nearly 20 million people at risk of starvation, this is no time to be turning our backs on the world.
The government should also invest in American innovation, especially to accelerate the clean energy revolution that is already reducing pollution and creating more domestic jobs.
The administration should respect science and continue to respond to the growing impacts of climate change, which is understood by the scientific and security communities alike. Human-caused climate change is already contributing to severe droughts and food shortages and accelerating the migration of people. Slashing climate and clean energy funds will undermine U.S. business and diplomatic interests and lead to greater security risks for us all.
It’s now up to Congress to restore funding, recognizing that America’s economic and security interests are intertwined with the well-being of people and the planet.
At NASA, a shift away from the home planet
Europa is still in the country's sights, but Earth a bit less so in the administration's new budget. Compared with other science agencies, NASA would fare well under the proposed budget, but a quartet of earth science missions would face elimination under the plan.
Overall, the budget requests $19.1 billion for NASA in the 2018 fiscal year, a 1% drop from its current levels—but that number is also larger than the request that the Obama administration made for 2017.
Earth science would face a cut of $102 million, to $1.8 billion, with three missions under preparation—and one currently in operation—canceled, along with an unspecified reduction in earth science research grants.
Notably, the Deep Space Climate Observatory, an active mission launched in 2015 to provide planetwide observations of Earth that has long ties to former Vice President Al Gore, would be terminated before its 5-year mission was up.
Also facing elimination are the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3, which would observe carbon dioxide flows; a mission to the space station that would have supported tests of a spectrometer intended to measure solar reflection; and Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem, a satellite that would measure the colors of the ocean to gauge the global flow of algae and the influence of ocean aerosols on cloud formation.
Planetary science would be boosted by 16% under the budget, to $1.9 billion, with explicit support for Europa Clipper, the agency's mission to make multiple flybys past Jupiter's icy moon, and the 2020 Mars rover. The budget would not support a separate mission to land on Europa, and also encourages the agency to support initiatives to explore the use of smaller, less expensive satellites for its science.
The budget maintains support for continued development of the Space Launch System, NASA's next-generation rocket set for launch in the next few years, and the Orion crew vehicle for human exploration. As expected, it seeks to cancel the Obama administration's Asteroid Redirect Mission, citing its expense, but offers no replacement near-term target for astronauts, such as the moon, or whether Mars remains its priority.
The budget also gives no hint of the administration’s view of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a space-based infrared observatory set to target dark energy next decade. The James Webb Space Telescope, set for launch next year, has chewed up the budget of the astrophysics division, and there’s concern that WFIRST could do likewise.
The request also seeks to eliminate the $115 million Office of Education, opting for "a more focused education effort" through NASA's science directorate.
— Paul Voosen
Voices: reaction to the budget proposal
“Deeply troubled.” “Very concerned.” “Unprecedented.” “Unwise.”
Scientific societies, patient groups, and research organizations are reacting with alarm to the many cuts to science programs in President Donald Trump’s budget request. A sampling of voices:
"This budget proposal would cripple American innovation and economic growth," said a statement from Association of American Universities President Mary Sue Coleman, and would "lead to a U.S. innovation deficit, as it comes at a time when China and other economic competitors continue their investment surge in research and higher education."
“The magnitude of this reduction in funding [for NIH] is unprecedented and will slow scientific discovery against chronic and infectious diseases,” the American Society for Microbiology said in a statement. The group did give the White House some credit for funding the Department of Agriculture’s competitive research grants program, and said that “while we applaud” decisions to continue to fund The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, “the proposed elimination of the NIH’s Fogarty International Center would only serve to weaken public health in America by preventing vital scientific collaboration around the globe.”
The budget, “if enacted, would be a step backward for scientific progress, jeopardize the U.S.’s role as a leader in innovation, and harm the American public,” said Christine McEntee, Executive Director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. “We are disheartened and significantly concerned by the … proposal, which clearly devalues science and research.”
“The President cites a lack of evidence as the reason for many of his budget cuts, which demonstrates a strong interest in ensuring federal policymaking relies on sound, science-based evidence,” said Mary Woolley, president and CEO of Research!America in Arlington, Virginia. “However, many programs that are valued by Americans, particularly those designed to protect the most vulnerable among us, are based on evidence and should be given the opportunity to prove their effectiveness.”
“Unfortunately, the Administration’s FY18 budget would erode the investment needed to maintain America's status as the global innovation leader, said Executive Director Stewart Young of the Task Force on American Innovation, a Washington, D.C.–based coalition of companies, university associations, and professional societies. “With the cuts to basic research offered in the FY18 budget, our nation risks creating an innovation deficit, which would diminish our ability to compete globally, to grow our economy, and to safeguard our nation.”
“There are certain investments the United States can’t afford to not make,” said Association of Public and Land-grant Universities President Peter McPherson in a lengthy statement. The Washington, D.C.–based group predicted the cuts would “severely negatively impact the lives of many Americans and blunt economic growth.”
The Arlington, Virginia–based National Science Teachers Association is “extremely disappointed with the education budget released this morning by the Trump Administration. … Eliminating Title II grants under the Every Students Succeeds Act (Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants) will mean the loss of content-rich professional development for thousands of science teachers nationwide who want to strengthen their content knowledge and classroom instruction.”
"The Trump administration’s proposed budget would cripple the science and technology enterprise through short-sighted cuts,” said Rush Holt, CEO of AAAS (publisher of ScienceInsider) in Washington, D.C. “Congress has a long bipartisan history of protecting research investments. We encourage Congress to act in the nation’s best interest and support sustainable funding for federal R&D;—for both defense and non-defense programs—as it works to address the FY 2018 budget."
“[W]e are grateful and encouraged that members of Congress have already spoken out about the importance of keeping NIH funding at healthy levels,” said David F. Arons, chief executive officer of the National Brain Tumor Society in Newton, Massachusetts, which was “disappointed” by the NIH cuts. “It would be a tremendous disappointment if we backed away now from all the gains that have been made and all those that are within reach."
“[T]he preliminary evidence suggests that the administration is taking its cues from a deeply flawed framework put forward by the Heritage Foundation,” wrote Joe Kennedy of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, D.C. “It is proposing to slash federal investments in critical areas that contribute significantly to economic growth.”
“The unprecedented budget cuts proposed by President Trump for FY 2018 would cripple the nation’s ability to support and deliver the important biomedical research that provides hope to all,” said Association of American Medical Colleges President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch. “National security is a priority for us all, but it cannot be achieved without a commitment to the nation’s health security.”
Posted in: Science and Policy
DOI: 10.1126/science.aal0923
Science News Staff
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Trump fiddles while Earth burns.
Less than two months into his presidency, Donald Trump is acting to reverse America's progress on climate change.
Trump fiddles while Earth burns: Our view
The Editorial Board , USA TODAY Published 6:14 p.m. ET March 15, 2017 | Updated 12 hours ago
New administration disrupts programs to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
ourview031517
(Photo: Evan Vucci, AP)
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Seemingly every month provides alarming new evidence of human-caused climate disruption. Last month was the hottest February on record globally, shattering the previous record by a long shot, according to analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Nearly all climate scientists agree that the key ingredient for rising temperatures — on land and in the oceans — is the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
That's why the best hope of heading off catastrophic climate change lies in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the whole basis for the 2015 Paris Agreement signed by 197 nations.
And it's why the United States, as the world's second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, pumping 6 billion tons into the air each year, took steps under President Obama to reduce carbon pollution through the next decade by 26% from 2005 levels.
Now, less than two months into his presidency, Donald Trump is acting to reverse America's progress on climate change.
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Sen. Jim Inhofe: Lift heavy environment regulations
On Wednesday, the president told an audience at a former industrial plant near Detroit that he'd roll back tough standards aimed at nearly doubling the fuel economy average for cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Those regulations, developed in 2012, have proved in their first phase to be a good way to jump-start efficiency.
A second phase of even tougher standards, for 2022-25 car and truck models, could be a bridge too far. Those standards could unfairly drive up vehicle costs to pay for complicated technical advancements and hamstring automakers with vehicles people won't buy, at least not until gas prices rise again. A better alternative would be a carbon tax rebated to consumers, an idea recently pushed by a slate of Republican elder statesmen.
But Trump doesn't seem interested in alternative ways for saving the planet, only in demolishing Obama's climate legacy. Next on the new president's to-do list is rewriting rules mandating cleaner-operating power plants, which, along with autos, create about 60% of U.S. greenhouse-gas pollution. Meanwhile, White House advisers are debating whether the U.S. should pull out of the Paris Agreement altogether, a step that would undermine other nations' voluntary efforts to curb carbon pollution.
There's more. According to news reports, Trump plans to lift a moratorium on federal coal leasing; dump regulations on oil industry methane pollution, a strong, if relatively short-lived greenhouse pollutant; and slash Environmental Protection Agency staffing and funding.
Trump's EPA administrator, former Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt, said last week that human activity is not the primary driver of global warming, dismissing both the scientific consensus and the very premise under which EPA regulates carbon dioxide. Pruitt is an acolyte of Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., a renowned global-warming skeptic; several former Inhofe aides have been transplanted to the EPA and the White House.
If there's any good news for the planet, it's that Trump is president and not emperor, so the public, legislators, states and environmental groups have plenty of ways to push back against his anti-environmental agenda. Redrafting both the fuel economy standards and Obama's Clean Power Plan would require a lengthy regulatory process of public hearings followed almost certainly by legal challenges.
In the meantime, the president ought to heed the advice of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and keep "a seat at the table" for America at global climate talks. Trump would also do well to listen to Defense Secretary James Mattis, whose unpublished written testimony before Congress argued that climate change is very real and a threat to U.S. interests overseas.
Shortly after Trump was elected, the president told The New York Times reporters and editors he had an "open mind" about climate change and the role of burning fossil fuels. His actions since then, however, suggest otherwise.
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Native communities look toward the next battleground after the Dakota Access pipeline.
So now that the camp has cleared, what will come next for the Standing Rock Sioux, and Native Americans as a whole, with President Trump now in office?
“Native people will be able to find support within our communities and from allies in the future.”
Updated by John Paul Brammer Mar 15, 2017, 9:00am EDT
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Photo by Stephen Yang/Getty Images
The last hundred people camped out for several months in protest of the Dakota Access pipeline’s construction marched out of the campground last month. A few dozen more stayed behind and were arrested for blocking continuation of the project.
The Army Corps of Engineers told water protectors (or demonstrators) they had until February 22 to leave the Cannon Ball, North Dakota, camp. It’s where President Donald Trump approved Energy Transfer Partners to resume construction for the pipeline shortly after he took office.
The Standing Rock Sioux had protested the Obama administration for months to halt the construction of the oil pipeline, fearing that a leak could contaminate the tribe’s main source of drinking water, Lake Oahe, and wreak havoc on sacred lands. While President Obama halted the project in December, Trump cleared Energy Transfer Partners to resume construction shortly after he took office the following month.
The move did not come as a surprise to those who have been fighting to have the pipeline stopped or diverted away from the lake. Few expected the Obama administration’s reprieve would last. Trump had made it clear that he supported both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. So now that the camp has cleared, what will come next for the Standing Rock Sioux, and Native Americans as a whole, with President Trump now in office?
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The big, nearly 200-year-old legal issue at the heart of the Dakota Access pipeline fight
Rosalyn LaPier is a visiting assistant professor of women’s studies and environmental studies and Native American religion at Harvard Divinity School. She is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana and is also Red River Métis.
“There has continually been a contentious relationship between tribal communities and the US government,” LaPier said of Trump’s presidency. “This is part of a long history that stretches all the way back to the 18th century.”
LaPier spoke to Vox about what the future of the struggle against the Dakota Access pipeline will look like under Trump, his potential impact on the environment, and what non-Natives can do to help.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
John Paul Brammer
Protests began under President Obama. What is the biggest thing that protectors think will change under Trump?
Rosalyn LaPier
I think it’s the ability to change federal laws. Mostly, it’s his Supreme Court. They have the ability to make decisions and change previous decisions that will deeply impact tribal communities.
John Paul Brammer
So what do you think the biggest difference will be between them?
Rosalyn LaPier
It’s hard to say. The only time that Trump has dealt with Natives before was when he tried to open a casino in New Jersey, in Atlantic City. He fought with a few tribes in the northeast area over casinos. He saw them as business adversaries.
During that time, he used the same rhetoric he uses today, the way he talks about people who are different. He fought very hard to stop tribes from being able to operate casinos, which he lost.
John Paul Brammer
What are water protectors and Native communities concerned about right now?
Rosalyn LaPier
One is change of regulations. We don’t know what he’s going to change in the next four years. That’s a big concern. We don’t know about funding, another huge issue. Is he really going to dramatically cut back funding on the Environmental Protection Agency? Is he going to defund science and scientists?
It’s through science that we’re able to learn about the natural world, and they are the ones who support, for example, quality environmental impact statements, which we rely on.
Are those going to be defunded? We don’t know yet. But those are major concerns.
John Paul Brammer
What is the future of Native sovereignty under Trump?
Rosalyn LaPier
He hasn’t changed any laws yet. But historically, the way it’s worked is Congress is the entity that sets up the relationship between tribal communities and the government. They have plenary power over tribal communities.
Usually Congress is creating laws and enacting laws, and then there’s the Supreme Court that addresses legal actions and impacts Native communities.
It’s pretty rare for a president to step in there, so the future depends on Trump’s relationship with Congress. We’ve seen executive orders coming from Trump, so I’m not sure where we’re headed.
John Paul Brammer
Where is Standing Rock finding hope right now?
Rosalyn LaPier
Hope has been evident in this entire last year with the protesting that’s been going on.
It’s shown that people will support you, and Native people will come together and support each other, and you can actually bring together a large number of allies to address these concerns.
That makes people feel much more hopeful about the ability to move forward. It tells us that Native people will be able to find support within our communities and from allies in the future.
John Paul Brammer
You are a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School. What role has spirituality played in these protests?
Rosalyn LaPier
One thing we’re seeing more and more of, especially with the younger generation, is viewing this type of action, viewing protest, as spiritual.
They call themselves protectors. There’s an effort to see addressing the environment and harm to it as part of a spiritual practice.
Standing Rock initially started as a camp that people viewed as ceremonial, a place with daily prayers. Most of the young people doing these protests see it as participating in a process where they are protecting sacred land.
John Paul Brammer
In that context, there’s a draft for a religious freedom executive order floating around. Does that have any impact on Standing Rock?
Rosalyn LaPier
Yes. For one, people in the US have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that different Native communities have different traditions and religions.
But what we’ve seen [in the past month or so] is a push in the cultural idea that America is a Christian nation, that Christianity is our heritage and culture.
For those of us who are not Christian, and those of us who are historians, we know that’s simply not true.
When we have these kinds of conflicts over land and landscape in Standing Rock, the major reason is because there’s a conflict in religious ideas about the use of land. This will continue to be a conflict between Natives and the US.
[Trump] hasn’t signed the order yet, so it’s hard to react ahead of time. But the whole subtext of “religious freedom” in the US is Christianity. The subtext is not minority religions in America or Native religion or Islam or Buddhism. They’re saying Christianity.
So, yes. Religion will be wrapped up in the Dakota Access Pipeline and in the Trump presidency.
John Paul Brammer
In the fight ahead, what can non-Natives do to help?
Rosalyn LaPier
Continue to be an ally. Educate yourself about what is going on. The president has stepped into the process by having two separate executive orders. He did one on DAPL, but he did another on environmental impact statements.
As long as allies stay educated, maybe even learning what an environmental impact statement is and why they matter, and then speaking to their local legislators about them.
Speak to the people making decisions and be watchful. Be out there on social media and make sure people know that when a process is supposed to occur, like an EIS, make sure it actually occurs. When needed, push back.
Finally, make sure to not speak on behalf of Native people. Allow Natives to be on the forefront on their issues and make sure they’re the ones who are being heard.
You can stand side by side with people without being the one who is speaking out.
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A dangerous change of climate in Washington.
It’s clear Pruitt’s primary interest is in ensuring blue skies for fossil fuel-based energy companies. At least he has done the nation and those dedicated to resisting his efforts a favor by making no secret of it.
PD Editorial: A dangerous change of climate in Washington
THE EDITORIAL BOARDBY THE EDITORIAL BOARD | March 15, 2017, 12:11AM | Updated 4 hours ago.
The anger and frustration among climatologists, environmentalists and others is understandable. But nobody should be surprised by the comments of Scott Pruitt, the new head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, who, in a recent interview, said he rejected the established science of climate change.
His denials about the growing danger of carbon emissions were known well before his confirmation as the nation’s top environmental official. They were reflected as much in his actions — including repeated attempts as Oklahoma’s attorney general to undermine the authority of the very agency he now heads — as his words. “I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact,” Pruitt said during an interview on the CNBC program “Squawk Box.” “So no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
To be precise, there’s no disagreement among those who are involved in the actual measuring of climate change and the impacts of human activity. There is widespread consensus among international scientists that climate change is real and that human activity is largely responsible. There’s also little disagreement among most researchers inside the EPA itself, the primary U.S. agency in charge of issuing regulations to curtail carbon emissions to combat climate change. The EPA makes clear on its own website that “natural causes do not explain most observed warming, especially warming since the mid-20th century.” It adds that “it is extremely likely that human activities have been the dominant cause of that warming.”
Where disagreement exists is between those who want to acknowledge the science and those who don’t. As Pruitt has indicated, he is in the latter camp along with Rick Perry, the newly confirmed secretary of energy, and President Donald Trump, who has called the idea of human-caused climate change a hoax.
But the real danger of this troubling triad is not that its members really believe more research is needed. It’s that they preach with a conviction that the research is settled and that it has concluded the opposite of what scientists believe — that there is no connection between human activity and climate change, therefore justifying their push to abandon the nation’s commitments to abide by the international Paris climate agreement and dial back efforts to restrict carbon emissions. Pruitt has already called the Paris climate accord, which was signed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, a “bad deal” for the United States. And under his leadership, the EPA has already withdrawn an agency request to oil and gas companies that they issue reports on the efficiency of their equipment and their methane emissions. Apparently, the agency is no long interested in knowing.
It’s clear Pruitt’s primary interest is in ensuring blue skies for fossil fuel-based energy companies. At least he has done the nation and those dedicated to resisting his efforts a favor by making no secret of it.
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Disengage from the spectacle.
Full immersion in the news cycle is just not healthy.
Disengage from the spectacle
Richard Heinberg
March 15, 2017
Behold today’s edition of Empire’s End—the biggest, best-ever 24/7 reality TV show! It’s been decades in preparation, with a budget in the trillions, a cast of billions! Its hero-villain is far more colorful and pathetic than Tony Soprano or Walter White. One day he and his team of oddball supporting characters appear to be winning bigly; the next, they’re crashing and burning. We’re all on the edges of our seats, alternately enraged, horrified, thrilled, or brought to tears in uncontrollable laughter. Who could bear to miss a minute of it?
Still, maybe at least some of us are better off severely limiting our consumption of American national news just now. It’s not that events in Washington won’t affect us. They most assuredly will. Rather, I’d argue that there are even more important things to attend to, over which we have far greater agency.
I’ve invested as much attention in the outrage-of-the-day distraction machine as anyone, spending scores of hours reading news reports and analyses, and I’ve written at least a half-dozen essays about our current tweeter-in-chief. And I’m here to tell you that full immersion in the news cycle is just not healthy.
Some readers may find this conclusion too cynical. I propose it only after a great deal of thought, and on the basis of two premises.
First Premise: We are at the end of the period of general economic growth that characterized the post-WWII era. I’ve written extensively about this, and there’s no need to repeat myself at length here. Suffice it to say that we humans have harvested the world’s cheap and easy-to-exploit energy resources, and the energy that’s left will not, much longer, support the kind of consumer economy we’ve built. Further, in order to keep the party roaring, we’ve built up consumer and government debt levels to unsustainable extremes. We’ve also pumped hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and oceans, putting the entire biosphere at risk. Yet our current economic and political systems require further, endless growth in order to avert collapse. Almost no one wants to discuss this situation—neither politicians nor economists. Therefore the general public is left mostly in the dark. Still, everyone senses a change in the air: despite jiggered statistics, workers know that their wages have stagnated or fallen in recent years, and members of the younger generation generally expect to earn less that their parents. This generates a persistent low-level sense of fear and dissatisfaction, guaranteeing a significant political shift such as we are seeing.
Second Premise: The new and current U.S. regime is adopting an essentially fascist character. When empires decline, people often turn to leaders perceived as strong, and who promise to return the nation to its former glory. In extreme instances, such leaders can be characterized as fascist—using the word in a generic sense to refer to authoritarian nationalism distinguished by one-party rule, the demonization of internal and external enemies (usually tinged with some form of racism or anti-Semitism), controls on press freedoms, and social conservatism. Here’s the thing: Once a nation turns decisively toward fascism, there’s rarely a turning back. Fascist regimes ruthlessly hobble and destroy all opposition. Typically, it takes a foreign invasion or a complete economic-political-social collapse to reset a national government that has gone fascist.
Now, put these two premises together. Those who get the second premise but miss the first tend to conclude that, at least until the new regime neutralizes significant opposition within the government, there is still something we can do to make everything turn out okay—in the sense that life would return to “normal.” Just defeat the fascists, no matter what the cost. But the end of growth ensures that, beyond a certain point, there will be no more “normal.” We’re headed into new territory no matter what.
Taking both premises into account, what are the likely outcomes?
It’s possible that the Trumpist insurgency will succeed in rooting out or suppressing opposition not just in Congress and the media, but also in Executive-branch departments including the CIA and FBI. In that case we may see at least a few years of authoritarian national governance punctuated by worsening financial and environmental crises, all against the backdrop of accelerating national decline. It’s just a guess, but the regime may have only two more months to somehow overcome resistance within the intelligence community; if it can do so, then the task of undercutting the judiciary and the media can be pursued at a more leisurely pace over the next year or two. But thanks to Premise One, short-term success probably will not lead to a regime that is stable over the long term. Eventually, no matter how vigorously it suppresses real or perceived enemies, the U.S. federal government will collapse as a result of war, economic crisis, or the simple ongoing erosion of biophysical support systems. At that point a possible trajectory for the nation would be to break apart into smaller geographically defined political entities.
However, the short-term success of the current regime is not yet guaranteed. It is still entirely possible that establishmentarian Democratic and Republican members of Congress, working with with renegade CIA and FBI mid-level officials and mainstream media outlets, could mire the new leadership in a scandal that is too deep to survive. Or, if Republicans lose control of Congress in 2018, articles of impeachment could be brought against Trump. This would not, however, guarantee a return to status quo politics in Washington. Not only does Premise One guarantee that the old status quo is no longer tenable, but also on its own terms the political system is now too broken and the nation too divided. In this scenario, pro-regime and anti-regime elites might just continue to escalate their attacks on one another until the whole system crashes—as I explained in a previous essay, citing the conclusions of ecologist Peter Turchin, which he based on his comparative study of over a dozen ancient and modern societies in analogous circumstances.
It’s just a guess: if the regime is successful in the short term, we might get a slower crash; if it fails, we might get a faster one. In any case, there’s no national team to root for that is capable of restoring the status quo ante Trump, at least not for long, if that is even desirable. Under either scenario, competent local governance might provide significantly better living conditions than the national average (more on that below), but the overall picture is pretty grim. A few years from now I expect that we’ll be in very different territory socially, politically, and economically. This is not a conclusion that I relish, but it’s one seemingly demanded by history and logic.
Nevertheless, what we do in the meantime could make a big positive difference to people and planet, both over the short term and also over the long term. Here are some specific things you can do:
Disengage from the spectacle. Learn what you need to know in order to assess immediate threats and general trends, but otherwise avoid spending long periods of time ingesting online, print, radio, or televised media. It’s bad for your mental health and takes time away from other items on this list.
If you haven’t already done so, make a personal and family resilience plan in case of a temporary breakdown in the basic functions of government (everyone should do this anyway in view of our vulnerability to earthquakes or weather disasters). Where should you be living? Are you growing any of your own food? Do you have some food and water in storage? Have you reduced your energy usage to a minimum, and installed solar PV (with short-term battery backup) and hot water solar panels? Do you have some cash set aside?
Work to build community resilience. If and when national governance breaks down, your local community’s degree of social and biophysical resilience will make all the difference for you and your family. Biophysical resilience relates to local food, water, and energy systems. A socially resilient community is one in which people are talking to one another, institutions for resolving disputes are trusted, and people look out for one another. Identify organizations that are building both kinds of resilience in your community and engage with them. These could be churches, civic government, non-profit organizations, food co-ops, energy co-ops, health co-ops, neighborhood safety groups, local investment clubs, or Transition groups. Get involved with existing organizations or start new ones. Yes, it takes a lot of time. But friends are more important than money in the bank—especially in times of social and political upheaval.
Direct some of your resilience-building efforts toward long-term and nature-centered concerns. This might take the form of conservation work of various kinds. In my last essay, I discussed assisting the migration of forests in the face of climate change. Carbon farming and providing wild bird and insect refuges are other options—not (only) because they’re enjoyable hobbies but because they help maintain the biophysical resilience of the ecosystems we depend on. Again, this is work that proceeds best in the company of others.
Take some time for the conservation of culture—arts and skills that are their own reward. Connecting with others in your community by enjoying or playing music together, singing, dancing, or making visual art deepens relationships and gives life more dimension and meaning.
While the legal and social functions of of liberal democracy persist, vigorous and sustained protest efforts could help rein in the fascist tendencies of the new American government. Participating in protests could enable you to get to know other members of your community. On the other hand, protest could further fragment your community if that community is already deeply divided politically—and it could eventually get you in a lot of trouble depending on how things work out, since protest under fascist regimes doesn’t produce the same result as protest in a liberal democracy.
Don’t obey the new leaders when they call for actions that undermine democracy and justice; instead, choose to actively disobey in ways that actually matter in the long term. Refuse to define yourself in terms of the regime. Yes, at certain moments in history it is necessary to take a stand one way or the other on a particular issue (such as the issue of slavery in mid-nineteenth century America), and in the days ahead some issue may require you to plant your flag. But this historical moment may be one when many real heroes and heroines choose to engage in ways that are not scripted by any of the elites.
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Final notice.
Do whatever is needed to become a carbon-neutral species as quickly as possible, or you can kiss your city, and, heck, your whole civilization, goodbye.
Final Notice
By Erik Assadourian, originally published by Resilience.org
March 14, 2017
From: The Earth
To: The people of Washington, DC, and particularly to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
This is a letter to inform you that the manner in which you are living your lives is incompatible with the continuation of your civilization. Without significant changes, your future will be filled with famine, war, fire, brimstone, blah, blah, blah.
Ok, I’m the Earth and that’s not how I talk. Consultants hired down on K Street—a spot you all seem to know too well—suggested I write in what they called “legalese,” but I’m more of a birdsong and blossom kind of being. And sometimes when I’m really miffed, I favor the artistic power of a hurricane, drought, or flood. You might remember some of my most dramatic recent works—you named them Katrina and Sandy.
Those consultants rolled their eyes when I suggested that an eerily early bloom of Washington’s renowned cherry blossoms followed by a massive snow storm would finally be the sign needed to take seriously the climatic changes that your binge on my stored carbon is causing. But they also weren’t inclined to extend the dam-busting storms on the American west coast or prolong the brutal droughts spanning large swaths of Africa. One actually shuddered at the thought.
So, long story short, I fired the lot of them and decided to write you a personal letter. I hope you enjoy the cherry blossoms—and the snow day.
But while you’re strolling along the Tidal Basin tweeting photos of the ice-encrusted blossoms, please take a moment to reflect on the fact that the Tidal Basin and much of the National Mall were reclaimed from the Potomac River and Tiber Creek. Keep in mind that your precious cultural heritage—placed upon a low lying area that should already be underwater—will certainly be inundated when the Western Antarctic melts (I shouldn’t tell you this but I’m getting a tingling on my underside that suggests you’ve got maybe a few hundred years at most before something seriously gives down there).
So please note that this letter is a last friendly warning that you must take the wrongs you have dealt me seriously. I will endure them, not quietly, like your quaint little Lorax character who let that greedy Once-ler get away with destroying the Truffula Forest (I wish I had thought of those trees, those trees, those Truffula trees—perhaps next go-round, after this current mass extinction event).
No, not like the Lorax but like the Greek goddess of agriculture, Demeter. Demeter, if you recall, allowed Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, to cut down her sacred grove, but then cursed him with an insatiable hunger that led him to keep eating until he literally ate himself! I always get a chuckle from that story. You, however, probably won’t find the famine, flooding, and war ahead very funny.
Anyhoo, I wish you all the best, truly, and I warn you one last time: get your act together. Ratify the Paris agreement, shift away from your unsustainable growth-centric consumer culture, impeach your president and other elected officials who don’t believe in the basic scientific realities of climate change (seriously?!). Do whatever is needed to become a carbon-neutral species as quickly as possible, or you can kiss your city, and, heck, your whole civilization, goodbye.
Best Wishes,
The Earth
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