Trump administration will be bad for the environment

July 5, 2017 · 0 Comments

By Bill Rea
The environment is in peril with the Donald Trump administration in charge in the White House.
That was the warning that Bolton area resident Skid Crease had recently for members of the Dufferin-Caledon Federal Liberal Association.
The lecturer and speaker had some optimistic words for the way things are currently going for the party, and was impressed with the performance of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Justin Trudeau works the camera as well as anybody I’ve seen in my life,” Crease declared, adding Trudeau knows he’s making a positive impression on the world stage.
He also observed that Trudeau doesn’t push people out of the way, as Trump has been seen doing.
Crease also praised Trudeau for bringing top business people together and promoting things like a stable banking system, encouraging others to do business with Canada when Trump got elected last year.
“Environmentalism in the age of Trump is a very dangerous thing,” Crease declared.
He added when it comes to climate change, things have already progressed to the point when it can’t be stopped. Carbon dioxide has been released into the air and ecosystems, even in the Arctic, he said. There have already been impacts. Permafrost has started to melt, releasing methane.
Crease said climate change is a normal occurrence, when it takes place over millions of years. The last ice age, he said, resulted in fresh water in the Great Lakes, but it has only taken 150 years to damage that supply.
Humans, he argued, are able to bring about change on this planet very quickly. “We’ve put the pedal to the metal,” he said, adding ecosystems cannot adjust to these changes fast enough. There is now just talk of mitigation, he observed, wondering what will happen when the next ice storm occurs.
Crease recalled he attended a conference on global warming in Toronto in 1988, chaired by former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis. Although there was a feeling that business and industry was not interested, Canada indicated it would take action as a country, agreeing to take the moral high ground.
Crease said he moved to Bolton and looked into how energy efficient he could make his house. He drove a hybrid, got heavily involved in recycling, etc.
He also observed this is a diverse community, yet there are those who live under bridges in Bolton.
“We have a tent city in Caledon,” he said.
On the other hand, he those who have something to give have an obligation, and one thing that would help would be to elect people who will do something to help people seven generations from now. That means a focus on things like clean water, healthy soil, love, self respect and other things that are important and really needed.
Such plans, he said are needed in a time when Trump has put someone like Scott Pruitt in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. He said both are climate change deniers, adding there are a lot of misinformed people in that administration.
Crease said humans have one planet and astronauts have seen the need to take care of it. Yet he said Pruitt and Trump want to cancel NASA’s surveillance system.
“It’s a strategy that is bound to benefit the one per cent,” he argued.
Crease called the current situation a fight for survival, adding environmentalists, in the age of Trump, have to wear it on their sleeves.