We are living through a week unlike any other in my lifetime; maybe the last truly comparable stretch was the bank closure that marked the start of the FDR administration, but then the president was there to tell Americans they had nothing to fear; now we have a president who can only insist we \u201ctake our medicine.\u201d He is constantly hyping the fear, and he is doing it with the constant invocation of a word\u2014\u201demergency\u201d\u2014designed to send us into ever-deeper panic.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019ve been doing my best to think as calmly about that word as I can, with the hope that it will offer at least a bit of mental pathway through this horror and perhaps point towards the exit.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with one of the less-noticed executive orders of the past week\u2014by no means the most important, though if it is carried out it will probably affect more square miles of the U.S. than any other. This is a\u00a0memorandum<\/a>\u00a0from Brooke Rollins, the Secretary of Agriculture and hence the overseer of America\u2019s vast National Forests. In it she declares \u201can emergency situation on America\u2019s National Forest system lands.\u201d<\/p>\n This emergency on our national forests, in the administration\u2019s view, is<\/p>\n due to uncharacteristically severe wildfires, insect and disease outbreaks, invasive species, and other stressors whose impacts have been compounded by too little active management.<\/p>\n For example:<\/p>\n As a result, the Forest Service is commanded to dramatically increase the amount of logging on these forests, exempting them from the longstanding system of oversight and challenge from communities and tribes affected by logging. Forest supervisors\u00a0have been told<\/a>\u00a0to increase the volume of timber offered for sale on our lands by at least 25 percent.<\/p>\n Now, as many of us have been patiently explaining for years, the biggest cause of increased fire on our forests is the dramatic increase in global temperatures that has extended fire season in California virtually year-round, and for extra months on either end across the West. The biggest infestation of insects has come from pine bark beetles, and that is\u00a0directly tied<\/a>\u00a0to a fast-warming climate. As Cheryl Katz explained almost a decade ago:<\/p>\n Bark beetles are a natural part of the conifer forest life cycle, regularly flaring and fading like fireworks. But the scope and intensity in the past two decades is anything but normal, scientists say, in large part because rising temperatures are preventing the widespread winter die-off of beetle larvae, while also enhancing the beetles\u2019 killing power. Not only are the insects expanding into new territory, they\u2019re also hatching earlier and reproducing more frequently. New infestations become full-blown with astonishing speed, and the sheer numbers of beetles exceeds anything forest experts have seen before. [One expert] says he\u2019s seen spruce beetle epidemics in Utah so intense that when the insects had killed all the trees, they began attacking telephone poles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To the extent that forests needed thinning to reduce wildfire risk (and it\u2019s\u00a0not at all clear that it does<\/a>), the Biden administration worked to get the effort underway, spending $4 billion on the work\u2014in some areas they\u00a0were ahead of schedule<\/a>, and in others behind, but overall<\/p>\n \u201cthe scale of spending is unprecedented, said Courtney Schultz with Colorado State University. The forest policy expert said millions of acres had been through environmental review and were ready for work.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we really want to go big across the landscape \u2013 to reduce fuels enough to affect fire behavior and have some impact on communities \u2013 we need to be planning large projects,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Where the work was lagging, it was largely the result of a lack of bodies\u2014something that will be considerably harder now that the Forest Service has\u00a0laid off<\/a>\u00a03,400 workers.\u00a0But at any rate, the new logging mandated under the \u2018emergency declaration\u2019 isn\u2019t the careful thinning work that might reduce fire intensity\u2014instead, the forest industry is getting access to what it really wants, large stands of big trees. It is, in other words, a money grab by vested interests that supported Trump\u2019s campaign.<\/em><\/p>\n That new cutting will make climate change worse, because as we now understand that\u00a0letting mature forests continue to grow is the best way to sequester carbon<\/a>. Meanwhile, cutting down those forests will mean far fewer trees to hold back the increasing downpours that climate change is producing. (A\u00a0new study\u00a0<\/a>released yesterday showed that even in areas of the West where climate change is drying out forests and increasing blazes, there\u2019s also a big jump in deluges\u2014what one expert called an \u201ceye-popping.\u201d) I remember sitting down with the chief of the Forest Service under Bill Clinton, almost three decades ago, and even then he said the Service\u2019s internal data showed the greatest dollar value of the forestlands was water retention, not timber.<\/p>\n So, to summarize: we\u2019ve invented an emergency where none exists. (The only thing even resembling an emergency in timber supply will come if we continue to tariff Canadian producers). We\u2019ve abandoned most of the slow and patient work to deal with a problem, and replaced it with a boondoggle designed to increase short-term profits for Trump donors. That will juice the one actual emergency we do face worse\u2014the rapid increase in global temperature\u2014and it will make the effects of that emergency harder to deal with.<\/strong><\/p>\n This pattern more or less holds across the board. Each \u201cemergency\u201d we\u2019re supposedly dealing with is, at worst, a long-term problem that needs serious and patient work, work that had begun in earnest under the Biden administration. Fentanyl deaths and illegal border-crossings\u2014which if you can remember back three weeks ago were the original \u201cemergency\u201d justifying tariffs on Canada and Mexico\u2014had both been\u00a0falling<\/a>\u00a0sharply<\/a>\u00a0in the last year. The \u201cemergency\u201d justifying tariffing every country on earth and also the penguins was the exact opposite of an emergency: a fifty-year hollowing out of industrial areas, which again had begun to reverse because of the IRA\u2014specifically targeted by the Trump administration for reversal. As the Washington Post\u00a0pointed out<\/a>\u00a0this week, a \u201cstunning number\u201d of battery and EV factories have been canceled in the last month, most of them in red states<\/p>\n According to data from Atlas Public Policy, a policy research group, more projects were canceled in the first quarter of 2025 than in the previous two years combined. Those cancellations include a $1 billion factory in Georgia that would have made thermal barriers for batteries and a $1.2 billion lithium-ion battery factory in Arizona.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard at the moment to be a manufacturer in the U.S. given uncertainties on tariffs, tax credits and regulations,\u201d said Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy. Hundreds of millions of dollars in additional investments appear to be stalled, he added, but haven\u2019t been formally canceled yet.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s working-class people in places like Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Michigan and Arizona that have seen some of these projects get canceled,\u201d Keefe said. \u201cAnd I can tell you who\u2019s benefiting \u2014 China and other countries that are doubling down.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I said before that there was one true emergency on our planet\u2014its rapid heating. Now of course there\u2019s another\u2014the implosion of economies, likely to lead (if history is its usual guide) to military conflict. But I\u2019d submit that the \u201cemergency\u201d that Trump is\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0responding to\u2014the one that motivated his Big Oil donors to donate half a billion dollars in the last election cycle\u2014is the rapid increase in renewable energy deployment.<\/p>\n Reuters\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0over the weekend that, for the first time in American history, less than half of electricity generated in March came from fossil fuels.\u00a0\u201cMore power was instead generated using renewable sources such as wind and solar, which in March reached an all-time high of 83 terawatt hours.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s wonderful news, of course, heralding the chance at a new world. But that\u2019s the crisis that Big Oil faces, and to fight it they\u2019ve been willing to drag us all down.<\/p>\n It\u2019s small comfort that the man they picked to do that job, Donald Trump, is so stupid that in the process of wrecking the American economy he\u2019s actually putting big pressure on the oil industry too. He\u2019s doing his best: alone among industries, fossil fuel was exempted from tariffs, in what the Guardian\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0\u201ca clear sign of the president\u2019s fealty to his big oil donors over the American people,\u201d and yesterday he commanded the Department of Justice to\u00a0try and stop states\u00a0<\/a>from suing the oil industry or enforcing the Climate Superfund laws that charge Exxon et al for the bridges and roads that taxpayers must constantly rebuild. (Trump comically called these efforts \u2018extortion,\u2019 even as he attempts to blackmail every country on earth, plus of course the penguins, with his tariffs). Trump\u2019s even trying to boost\u00a0coal<\/a>\u00a0this week, even though the\u00a0data shows<\/a>\u00a0that 99 percent of the time it would be cheaper to build new renewables.<\/p>\n But the damage he\u2019s doing to the world economy threatens to spill over to the oil industry\u2014as the price of a barrel plummets, the chances of drilling new wells plummets too. According to the Times yesterday, Harold Hamm\u2014Trump\u2019s industry bundler\u2014was wondering how to explain to the president that \u201cwhen you get down to that $50 oil that you talked about, then you\u2019re below the point that you\u2019re going to drill, baby, drill.\u201d Fossil fuel stocks have\u00a0fallen sharply<\/a>. Ha ha.<\/p>\n But in reality there\u2019s one immediate and overwhelming emergency. It\u2019s name is TrumpMuskVance, and it\u2019s threatening to engulf almost everything in its unholy flames. People\u2014even a few Senators (thank you Cory Booker)\u2014have begun pulling the alarms, and the volunteer fire company has begun to respond (such thanks to all who came out for the Hands Off rallies this weekend<\/em>). We\u2019re going to need quick wits, courage, incredibly hard work, and some real luck to put out this moronic inferno\u2014but that\u2019s the job of being a citizen in 2025. You matter as a political actor, more than any of us ever have before; I\u2019ll make sure you know of the opportunities to put your talents to use!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019re going to need quick wits, courage, incredibly hard work, and some real luck to put out this moronic inferno\u2014but that\u2019s the job of being a citizen in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3512199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79716,213529,79718],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3512183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","category-energy-featured","category-environment"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3512183"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3512198,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512183\/revisions\/3512198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3512199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3512183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3512183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3512183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n