by Letters to the Editor
March 16, 2025

To the Editor:

Before his appointment as U.S. Energy Secretary, Chris Wright was the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America’s second largest fracking company. Wright recently asserted:

“I am a climate realist. The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world…The only interest group that we are concerned with is the American people.”

However, stopping Earth’s warming is not consistent with the Trump Administration’s agenda of “Drill, baby, drill!” and “American energy dominance.” While it’s true that some forms of fossil fuel generation are cleaner than others, they are all increasing the concentration of heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Limiting global mean temperature increase at any level requires global CO2 emissions to become net zero at some point in the future.”

This means reducing carbon dioxide emissions enough that they are balanced by CO2 removal, such as being absorbed by forests and dissolved in the oceans. Otherwise the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to grow.

Disturbingly, the earth has already warmed to the point that, instead of absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, the planet’s carbon sinks are becoming sources of CO2 emissions. Warmer oceans are less able to take up carbon dioxide. Moreover, permafrost is thawing, and forests are burning.

These climate feedbacks indicate that we are losing our allies in nature that are essential to the climate fight.

In the words of Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end.”

And in a interview about the catastrophic fires in California, climate scientist Peter Kalmus warned:

“It’s not a new normal. A lot of climate messaging centers around this idea that it’s a new normal. It’s a staircase to a hotter, more hellish Earth.”

A recent report by the United Nations states that, without a greater commitment to reduce emissions, the Earth will warm by 3.1° C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. And the increase in global heating is expected to continue beyond the end of the century.

A World Bank report titled Turn Down the Heat, warns: “(A) global mean temperature increase of 4°C approaches the difference between temperatures today and those of the last ice age, when much of central Europe and the northern United States were covered with kilometers of ice and global mean temperatures were about 4.5°C to 7°C lower. And this magnitude of climate change—human induced—is occurring over a century, not millennia.”

This hotter climate is likely to have devastating consequences, such as the flooding of coastal cities, substantial reductions in crop yield, greatly increased water scarcity, major damage to seaports and the destruction of fisheries and coral reefs. Institutions that would normally support adaptation could collapse.

Not only does climate change threaten the foundation needed for human thriving, it disproportionately affects the world’s poorest nations and their most vulnerable citizens. A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund states: “The climate crisis is the defining human and child’s rights challenge of this generation, and is already having a devastating impact on the well-being of children globally.”

One billion children are deemed to be at “extremely high risk” from climate hazards like heat waves, drought and water scarcity. The majority live in less developed nations in Africa and South Asia that have contributed very little to this global problem. The ten countries where children are most at risk are responsible for only .5% of the world’s emissions.

According to the report, The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change:

“The overwhelming message is that early steps to limit or mitigate climate change are essential, because longer-term efforts to adapt or anticipate may not be possible.”

Notably, the United States is the world’s greatest cumulative emitter, with historical emissions that are 71% more than second place China. Imagine if the Roman Empire had possessed the power to irreparably harm much of the life on earth, yet limited its concern for sustainability to just a few generations.

Furthermore, about half of the CO2 humans emit stays in the atmosphere for centuries or more. Consequently, the U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment concludes:

“Climate change resulting from anthropogenic CO2 emissions and any associated risks to the environment, human health and society, are…essentially irreversible on human time scales.”

In his book, “A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change,” Stephen M. Gardiner writes that, although climate change is usually discussed in scientific and economic terms, “the deepest challenge is ethical.” According to Gardiner: “What matters most is what we do to protect those vulnerable to our actions and unable to hold us accountable, especially the global poor, future generations and nonhuman nature.”

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and funding adaptation is one of humanity’s greatest moral obligations. Even small changes in the trajectory of Earth’s warming could mean better lives for decades for many millions of people.

As the world’s most significant emitter and most powerful nation, America has a responsibility to embrace a leadership role in addressing the climate crisis.

Terry Hansen
Milwaukee, Wis.