American leaders support clean air and climate progress — regardless of Trump’s executive order

President Trump’s executive order seeking to unravel critical public health and climate protections — including the Clean Power Plan — is being met with strong rebuttals and a clear demonstration of ongoing climate leadership from across the country.

An extraordinary diversity of American faith and justice leaders, businesses, health and security experts, and elected officials have spoken out against Trump’s actions or vowed to continue reducing carbon pollution and move towards a low-carbon future.

The overwhelming response to these recent attacks on our vital climate safeguards shows that Americans are coming together to protect our communities. Millions of Americans — a majority of adults in every congressional district — support limiting carbon emissions to guard against climate instability.

Here are some highlights from the many powerful statements made in the last week:

Leaders from at least 15 faith communities raised alarm at the dangerous impacts rolling back climate progress would have on America’s most vulnerable communities:

• The United Church of Christ’s national leadership said: “Because climate change makes all other injustice worse, now is the time for us to step up.”
• “The Clean Power Plan [gives] states a framework for progress in the sacred work of safeguarding our earth’s natural resources,” affirmed Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner on behalf of Reform Judaism
• “The absence of a strong climate policy means more dangerous pollution that harms the unborn and children,” warned Evangelical Environmental Network President and CEO Mitch Hescox.
• “This is a challenge for us,” said Vatican leader Cardinal Peter Turkson, a chief architect of the Pope’s “Laudato Si” encyclical on climate change. “Fortunately, in the United States, there are dissenting voices, people who are against Trump’s positions.”

Health associations representing more than 500,000 doctors and medical experts emphasized the public health imperative of reducing air pollution and addressing climate change:

• “Implementing the Clean Power Plan alone would prevent 90,000 asthma attacks and 3,600 premature deaths every year once fully in place, wrote the American Lung Association. “Our nation needs these lifesaving protections.”
• The Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health said “As medical professionals, many of our members know firsthand the harmful health effects of climate change on patients.”
• “Clean air should not be a luxury, and it should not be determined by ZIP code,” said the American Academy of Pediatrics.

At least 75 mayors, state governors, and attorneys general who represent more than 149 million people — nearly half of the U.S. population — reiterated the need to combat climate change and protect the communities they serve:

• Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said: “The science of climate change is settled and the President’s actions today turn the federal government’s back on Pennsylvania’s environment and our economy.”
• Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said: “We will keep building a clean energy future that creates Colorado jobs, improves our health and addresses the harmful consequences of a changing climate.”
• A coalition of 23 attorneys general and local legal counsels from states including California, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, and Virginia wrote: “We won’t hesitate to protect those we serve—including by aggressively opposing in court President Trump’s actions that ignore both the law and the critical importance of confronting the very real threat of climate change.”
• Mayors from 47 cities including Houston (TX), Knoxville (TN), Durham (NC), Fayetteville (AR), Los Angeles (CA), Chicago (IL), and New York City, released a letter reading, “Climate change is both the greatest single threat we face, and our greatest economic opportunity for our nation.”

 

Power companies owning generating capacity able to power roughly two-thirds of all homes in the U.S. spoke out to recommit to providing ever more clean energy in the wake of the executive order. Here is a sample:

• “We intend to keep moving forward with a low-priced, clean energy strategy that provides the economical, clean energy our customers want,” said Ben Fowke, CEO of Xcel Energy.
• “Going forward, we anticipate an increase in renewable generation capacity and declining utilization of coal,” said Southern Company spokesperson Terrell McCollum.
• “We will continue our transition to more natural gas and renewables as we balance out our generation portfolio and provide cleaner energy,” said a spokesperson for American Electric Power.
• “Because of the competitive price of natural gas and the declining price of renewables, continuing to drive carbon out makes sense for us,” said Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good.

 

Reducing carbon emissions and moving to cleaner sources of energy is good for business, say Fortune 500 companies including Apple, General Electric, and Walmart.

• “We’re disappointed the administration has decided to roll back climate regulations such as the Clean Power Plan and others,” said Edward Hoover, a senior executive at Mars Inc.
• Fighting climate change is “good for the business, our shareholders and customers,” said a Walmart
• “We believe climate change should be addressed on a global basis,” wrote General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. “We hope that the United States continues to play a constructive role in furthering solutions to these challenges.”
• “We believe that strong clean energy and climate policies, like the Clean Power Plan, can make renewable energy supplies more robust and address the serious threat of climate change while also supporting American competitiveness, innovation, and job growth,” a group of tech companies including Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon said in a statement.

Leading national security experts warned of the impact President Trump’s order will have on American security.

• The non-partisan American Security Project said: “While energy independence is a credible goal, the actions suggested will not lead to real energy security. Rather, the order removes basic programs, such as the Clean Power Plan and climate resilient development, which bolster the security of our country.”
• Alice Hill, a former resilience policy advisor to the National Security Council under President Obama said: “Deliberately ignoring the devastation brought by climate change will leave us anything but secure.”

Officials who served administrations in both parties criticized moving backwards on climate:

• “This is not just dangerous; it’s embarrassing to us and our businesses on a global scale to be dismissing opportunities for new technologies, economic growth, and U.S. leadership,” said Gina McCarthy, former EPA administrator under Barack Obama.
• Asked about rumors the Trump Administration could abandon the Paris Agreement, Christine Todd Whitman, an EPA administrator under George W. Bush, said, “We lose any ability, any moral authority, to say to any other country, ‘You have to clean up your act.’”
• Trump’s order “is reckless, arrogant policy that ignores the safety and well-being of our country and our children,” said former Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern, who helped broker the Paris Agreement.

 

Community organizers working for environmental justice condemned President Trump’s attacks on America’s most vulnerable communities:

• “The decision by President Donald Trump to roll back the hard fought progress made on clean air and clean energy is extremely disappointing and dangerous,” said NAACP President & CEO Cornell William Brooks. “We are now on a dangerous path that puts workers, communities and the planet in harm’s way.”
• Former Kentuckians for the Commonwealth chairperson Dana Beasley Brown said: “As Kentuckians, we have to work for the kinds of solutions we know can provide good jobs, allow people to stay and live in their communities, take care of their families, and not have to make the choice between being healthy and having a good job.”
• Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network said “Indigenous peoples will not stand idle as we tell the world the Earth is the source of life to be protected, not merely a resource to be exploited and abused.”

President Trump’s executive order will only take us backwards to an era of more pollution and more disease.

But it is clear from the overwhelming pushback that community leaders, businesses, and health and security experts, as well as millions of Americans across the country, support maintaining strong climate and public health protections and moving forward on clean energy — not turning back the clock.

Read more responses to the Executive Order here.

 

By Charlie Jiang

 

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