Open Forum: We must act quickly to combat climate change
It’s hot outside. Of course, it’s summer. But 2025 is on track to be one of the hottest years in the history of weather forecasting. 2024 was the hottest year, and 2023 set the previous record.
Over 100 are dead in the Texas flooding with many still missing. At least 250 died in the southeast from Hurricane Helene last year. But while extreme rainfall is becoming more common, so are extreme droughts and related wildfires. The cost of the wildfires earlier this year in Los Angeles could reach $250 billion.
What do all of these developments have in common? Climate change caused by increased levels of carbon in the atmosphere. For decades, scientists have known of the greenhouse effect. Increased carbon in the atmosphere causes heat from the sun to be trapped, causing temperatures to rise. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing much faster than it can be removed by natural processes and is now at the highest level it has been in millions of years. Warmer air holds more moisture, causing extreme storms and rainfall. Elsewhere, warmer air is dryer, causing droughts and wildfires.
The cause of increased carbon in the atmosphere is clear—the burning of fossil fuels. If we continue to depend on fossil fuels as we have in the past, not only will extreme weather events become increasingly frequent, but our children will inherit a world we and our ancestors would not recognize, with large parts of it uninhabitable. Moreover, air pollution from fossil fuels contributes to an astounding one in five premature deaths, from cancer, asthma, heart disease and other conditions.
Fortunately, this is not necessary. God has given us almost limitless energy in sunlight and wind, and modern technology allows us to harness this energy to produce electricity that can meet most of our energy needs. We probably cannot undo much of the damage that has already been done by atmospheric warming, but we can keep conditions from getting catastrophically worse.
But we must act quickly. Other nations, notably China, are already doing this. The United States started to turn toward this direction three years ago through the support for solar and wind energy in the Inflation Reduction Act. Nationally, 200 clean energy factories have created $33 billion a year in economic activity and over 120,000 jobs. Seventy percent of this activity is in states that voted for Trump.
Now, however, the Trump administration and MAGA representatives in Congress have declared war on the planet. The misnamed “Big Beautiful Bill” slashes incentives for wind and solar energy, battery storage, electric cars and home efficiency while expanding tax credits and deductions for fossil fuels and biofuels. At the same time, it opens more federal lands to drilling and coal mining, and actually reduces royalties paid to the federal government for these leases.
Since the reconciliation legislation passed, Trump has issued an executive order doubling down on blocking clean energy expansion. He has also talked about eliminating federal disaster assistance through FEMA (though perhaps now only for blue and not for red states), so the Trump administration is not only contributing to making disasters worse and more frequent but also refusing to help clean up the messes his policies contribute to.
Renewable energy is not only better for our climate and health, but also cheaper. Ninety percent of electric generation capacity brought online in the recent past is renewable. The cost of wind and solar have come down dramatically, and renewables are cheaper than gas, oil, or coal, even without subsidies. They can also be brought online more quickly and once they are built, wind and sunlight are free.
Developing renewable energy is particularly urgent for Virginia. Virginia taxpayers spend almost a billion dollars a year subsidizing the wealthy corporations that operate data centers. Seventy percent of the world’s internet traffic flows through Northern Virginia data centers which consume over one quarter of all electricity in Virginia. More than half of U.S. energy consumption attributable to data centers occurs in Virginia. As AI proliferates, the demand for power becomes even greater. And the cost of increased infrastructure needed to power data centers is being shouldered in part by increased costs for Virginia’s residential utility consumers. But development of low-cost solar and wind power production is being stymied not just by the Trump administration, but also by the Younkin administration and local governments. This needs to change dramatically.
The Trump administration’s war on the climate defies rational explanation. It makes no sense scientifically or economically. It can be partially explained by the effective lobbying of greedy fossil fuel companies. But it seems to me that it is mostly fueled by obsessive resentment of MAGA supporters against “woke” green energy, This resentment, however understandable, threatens the future of our children and our planet.
Timothy Jost lives in Harrisonburg.