Sheldon Whitehouse’s Three Hundred Climate Warning

On April 18, 2012, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse published the first (if not) this– The longest series of speeches in Congress’ history. It was at the end of Barack Obama’s first term, when Whitehouse, a Democrat in Rhode Island, believed the president had not done enough or had actually done nothing to fight climate change. “For years, the Obama administration did not use the term climate and change,” Whitehouse recalled in a recent Zoom interview in his office. “So, I made the decision, rather than wandering with the current events of this week, and I will speak in every week’s climate speech.” As can be seen in space, he has a poster showing the Earth. Next to the earth, the poster says:It’s time to wake up“Use square white letters.

Whitehouse continues to “wake up” speeches every week (more or less) in Obama’s second semester Donald Trumpfirst. He will support more and more signs on the easel and speak on most of the Senate floors, talking about the latest developments in climate science, the latest climate-related disasters and the continued inaction of Congress. “Congress is still doing nothing,” he said in a two-hundred-second speech in April 2018.

when Joe Biden Taking office in January 2021, Whitehouse gave up her weekly speeches. “Biden made a lot of positive voices about what takes climate seriously,” Whitehouse explained, but he suspected that this might be temporary. When the Smithsonian called to ask him to donate the poster to its collection, he paid tribute: “I said, ‘Thank you, but I might just need it, so I’m going to stick with it.’” In February 2022, he pulled the sign out of the storage space. “Sure enough, the Biden administration is very sponge,” he said. “So, I’m back to speeches again, rather than weekly and regularly, trying to put them in a better position.” In the summer of 2022, Congress passed and signed Biden, the first major legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Inflation reduction method (IRA), approved hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits and grants to promote clean energy development. Still, Whitehouse occasionally continues to run out of his own marks in 2023 and 2024.

On July 9, Whitehouse plans to deliver his third “Wake Time” speech. Depending on your opinion of things, the timing couldn’t be better or it wouldn’t be worse.

Trump 2.0 and bunker bomb administration are equivalent to handling climate action. The White House not only tried to eliminate federal programs designed to reduce emissions, but also violated state and corporate efforts. It removed many government programs that support climate science and closed many climate-related websites, including one dedicated to the national climate assessment report, the next edition, which was attempted to cancel in 2027.

Meanwhile, the government has been showering for the fossil fuel industry with love. It began on the day of Trump’s second inauguration, when he issued an executive order declaring an “energy emergency” and explicitly detached wind and solar energy from the list of “energy resources.” Since then, a new blank has been brought to the industry almost every week: Huge tax and expenditure bills Trump signed last week with Bloomberg public opinion editor Mark Gongloff explainnew tax breaks for fossil fuel producers, including expanded tax breaks, including pumping more oil using captured carbon dioxide. “It’s hard to imagine a taxpayer’s taxpayer,” Gongloff wrote.

Between the government’s administrative actions and the provisions of the tax bill, the catalog of all climate-destructive actions over the past six months will extend to hundreds of entries. (Climate backtracking, a website Operated by the Sabin Climate Change Law Center, it currently lists one hundred and ninety-six steps to “rearing backwards or completely eliminate federal climate mitigation and adaptation measures.”) The Republicans’ most resulting climate backtracking actions since January include:

Costs for canceling methane leakage

Methane is an effective greenhouse gas that is stronger than carbon dioxide in the medium to medium term, and under the IRA, oil and gas companies that fail to curb methane leakage will have to start paying per ton. In February, Congress voted to remove the rules set by the Biden administration for overseeing expenses, and the start date of the allegations was delayed by a decade under the bill signed by Trump last week, meaning that methane reduction efforts seem to die in the foreseeable future.

Eliminate IRA clean energy tax credits

Among the many tax credits that Congress recently voted to abolish or eliminate, is the credit for wind and solar production, used to invest in clean energy, buy electric vehicles, and improve home energy efficiency. Princeton University researchers calculated that the bill would increase U.S. emissions by nearly 2 million tons by 2030. “This bill will be trapped in the development of thousands of energy projects, endanger billions of dollars in private investment and kill hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” the Community Solar Visit Alliance statementthe day the Senate passed the legislative version.

Revoke California’s exemption

Under the Clean Air Act, California has the right to set stricter vehicle emission standards than federal regulations. In exercising this power, the state has decided that at least part of the power must be generated by all new cars sold after 2035, with many other states announcing plans to follow California’s leading edge. But in May, Congress voted to overturn the so-called California exemption. It is unclear whether the move is legal—California and ten other states have sued to prevent overturning—but in addition to repealing the federal electric vehicle tax credit, turmoil may significantly slow down EV sales.

Of course, all of this is happening as global temperatures continue to rise. Last year it was The hottest year on record. Although global temperatures were almost as high as last year’s first three months, although at the same time, the world entered the so-called La Nina phase, which usually brings cooler weather. In late March, Arctic sea ice reached record range at the end of winter, and in February, Antarctic sea ice reached near-record lowest levels at any time of the year. According to a recent study in the journal Earth Systems Science DataWarming is accelerating: between 2015 and 2024, the planets heated at 0.27 degrees Celsius – Fahrenheit, “are unprecedented in tool records.”

Whitehouse was still studying the details of his three hundred speech the other day. “We are now entering the age of consequences of climate negligence. What scientists predict has actually started to happen, and now it is so real and direct, we should consider that our failure is so severe.”

Asked how effective any alarm call to repeat three hundred times was, he replied: “I think the work I did makes the real corruption influence contradict the tremendous influence of the fossil fuel industry, which is against the fact that it’s hard to control now that it’s anyone. ♦