Shelter Island Reporter Editorial: Ignoring the facts

The United States has taken a U-turn away from producing clean, sustainable energy and back to a near-total focus on burning fossil fuels.

The vehicle for this return to a policy that is endangering life on the planet is the massive bill that recently passed Congress with the slimmest, partisan majority, and was signed by President Trump, whose administration created it and pushed it through. 

The engine of this rush toward increasing oil and coal burning is Project 2025, a blueprint created by right-wing activists, which among other things, prioritizes oil and gas production and opening public lands for oil companies to drill.  

When Mr. Trump was running for office in 2024 and asked about Project 2025, he said he hadn’t heard of it, or he had heard of it but hadn’t read it. In any event, President Trump named Russell Vought, the principal author of Project 2025, as the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The president has called clean energy initiatives “a scam,” which is idiotic on its face. It’s baffling that there are still people who deny that climate change and severe weather patterns are chiefly caused by the burning of fossil fuels that erode the planet’s atmospheric shield, something documented by an overwhelming consensus of scientists and scientific organizations. Disbelieving the evidence is on par with the belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Or the lunar landing in 1969 was a TV show produced in a Houston studio. 

According to the Center for American Progress, an independent, non-partisan policy institute, “123 members of the 118th Congress deny that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels.” (The CAP also notes that, “The climate deniers in the current Congress have received $52,071,133 in lifetime campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.”)

Project 2025 also calls for draconian cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency and shutting down the EPA’s power to monitor and regulate carbon dioxide, which is making the planet hotter by the year. Lee Zeldin, former congressman who represented the East End, and mainly a moderate when he was in the House, is now EPA director. But he’s had a road to Damascus conversion, completely on board with the administration and Project 2025.

As The New York Times reported: “Mr. Zeldin has withheld billions of dollars in climate funds approved by Congress, tried to fire hundreds of employees, recommended the elimination of thousands more E.P.A. scientists, and started trying to repeal dozens of environmental regulations that limit toxic pollution. He has filled the leadership ranks at the agency with lobbyists and lawyers from industries that have fought environmental regulations.”

What does all this mean for the East End? Here, for those who have eyes to see, change in climate is affecting our shores. Rising sea levels have alerted the Shelter Island ferry companies to go into long-range planning to secure bulkheads and roadways and raise the landing docks. We applaud them for their forward thinking, looking at data and responding accordingly, as any business would.

Christopher Gobler, a professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and endowed chair of Coastal Ecology and Conservation, has spoken about rising sea levels: “This is all being driven by climate change. Rising sea levels occur because the oceans are warmer and expanding and the polar ice caps are melting, and storms are more intense because of climate change. Attacking climate change is therefore priority number one, and making these connections will then motivate people to move faster towards addressing climate change.”

Average annual temperatures on Long Island are estimated to go up from between 3.8 degrees and 5.8 degrees in 25 years. When children born today reach their middle years, the thermometer will see a spike that some experts say will be nearly 10 degrees higher compared with 2010.

It’s time to keep our eyes open, and stay educated on a threat to the natural world that is being ignored by the powers-that-be, and seek methods to change minds and actions.