Creation Care Corner May 2025

Day after day we hear announcements of federal programs being cancelled and people being fired who do research and administer benefits to people and places in need.  It is no different with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The new EPA director, Lee Zeldin, announced in March that he will cancel 31 environmental regulations.  More than 1100 EPA staff scientists are being fired.  The president promised to promote opening “hundreds” of coal-fired power plants.  We know that coal produces far more pollutants than other energy sources and was being rapidly phased out, but he calls coal “beautiful” and “clean”.

Zeldin said this action will lower the price of cars, home heating, and running businesses.  (Maybe he should have talked with the president about not imposing gigantic tariffs if he’s really concerned with lowering prices.)

Policies they are scaling back include rules on greenhouse gas emissions and the enforcement of laws which help poor and minority communities that are struggling with pollution.  They also plan to ignore potential climate disasters in making policy.

Former heads of the EPA, William Reilly, Christina Todd Whitman, and Gina McCarthy, promised in the New York Times that we will miss the EPA after it’s gutted.  It has helped clean our nation’s waterways and air, replace lead pipes and asbestos, reduce acid rain, and remove toxins and nuclear waste from the nation’s most contaminated lands.  It has also fought to protect poor people whose neighborhoods took the brunt of pollution from power plants, garbage incinerators, refineries and factories said Zoe Schlanger in The Atlantic.  These actions will certainly leave more Americans sicker and dying sooner.  -from THE WEEK, March 28, 2025

Another current issue is artificial intelligence (AI) and its need for extreme amounts of energy to run its complex programs on gigantic servers.  Big Tech companies are pushing to triple nuclear power by 2050 to produce the amount of electricity they need.  The Financial Times reported that Amazon, Google, and Meta have signed a statement encouraging governments around the world to smooth regulations for nuclear power expansion.  Other signers include the oil group Occidental and chemical producer Dow.  Amazon has invested over $1 billion in nuclear power in the past year.                                                                                                       Sandy McKitrick, Climate Care Team