Patricia DeMarco Ph.D.

"Live in harmony with nature."

Tag Archives: global warming


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Endangered but Not Yet Doomed

12.Feb.2026

By Patricia M. DeMarco

This year has seen so many long days of cold harsh reality crashing through the optimism and hope of the last two years. From the vision from ReImagine Appalachia to the many responses to the Community Change grants and the burst of enthusiasm for what was supposed to be a stable ten -year commitment to renewable energy support all had the rug pulled out from under them. The Trump flurry of Executive Orders, rescissions and retractions of approved funds, even grants under contract has sent shock waves through one community after another.  The deliberate cruelty with which federal assistance for disasters has been withheld or retracted, sometimes based on partisan vindictiveness, stands with little challenge. Now comes the gleeful revoking of the Endangerment Finding that supported EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, and point source pollution from power plants, factories and fossil extractive industries.[1]We are numb. Stunned into a shocked silence.

Well, the time for stunned inaction is over.  The America built on immigrant blood, sweat and tears, the America striving toward shared prosperity and a more just, equitable and inclusive future, the America of hope, compassion and joy must rise up again. We who believe in a government of the People, by the People and FOR THE PEOPLE must stand up and take back what is good and right as our responsibility and our duty.  We know that the science supporting the need to control greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels gives a short and closing window of timing for effective action. 

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution.

Luthi, D., et al.. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record. Find out more about ice cores (external site).

We dare to believe that excellent education for all makes stronger citizens and a stronger economy.  We insist that the health and well-being of all people depend on access to health care for everyone. We know that to have healthy people we depend on clean water, fresh air and fertile ground as well as the vast number of species that provide our life support system. It is our duty to protect and strengthen the laws and regulations that control and prevent the massive pollution that has become the hallmark of modern civilization. It is time for an effective national law on Climate Change.

No longer can we tolerate sweeping the climate issue to the side, whispering about it in closed enclaves. We must no longer tallow climate action to be disparaged as “woke” or succumbing to the “Climate is a hoax” dogma issuing from Trump and his minions.  The fossil industries who bought this President are bringing down our entire civilization.[2]These multi-national corporations have allegiance to no country, and certainly see no value in preserving humanity or any part of the natural world.  Next quarter profits are their only metric.  And if we look to the fate of our grandchildren, twenty years hence, the corporations do not care.  They have no children. They do not breathe air or drink fresh water. They do not bleed in war. They do not get illnesses from their filthy enterprises. The stock market is soaring.  The GDP is fine, what is our problem?

We need to focus on the fundamental systems that support a better future for all of us. That means we must address the unjust and skewed wealth distribution in our country. It is not a viable situation for the top 1% of people to control 86% of the wealth while the lowest 50% control less than 15%.[3]  The frozen federal minimum wage at $7.25/hour combined with a systematic attack on unions and worker organizing has killed the middle class.[4] The Tax Reform Act of 1986 under Ronald Regan and the “Big Beautiful Budget Bill” of Trump have combined to increase the disparity in wealth distribution.  Money is the heart of this evil. Unfettered capitalism feeds greed. And greed kills. Policies that demonize equity, inclusion, immigrants, and dignity to any outside the cult of wealth are destroying the best of what made America a great country. Now ripping away the Endangerment Finding assures the destruction of our life support system:clean air, safe drinking water, fertile ground and the millions of species that constitute the great Web of Life, of which humans are but one part. 

Climate must be on the agenda for the Mid-term Elections.  Rescinding the Endangerment Finding does not rescind the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. It just cuts out the ability of our government to move in a more positive and healthy direction. We can thrive without fossil fuels. But we cannot even survive in a planet warmed above the range of viability for all living things…including humans. We cannot have healthy, thriving people without a healthy thriving environment. We are facing our own extinction.  It is time to ACT!

Adopt a National Energy Act for Climate Resilience. We must recognize that the energy system is in the midst of a critically necessary transformation away from a fossil resource -based system that moves from extraction to production to trash. The renewable resource based, circular materials and energy management system is emerging worldwide, in spite of all U.S. efforts to stifle its progress.  We must boldly examine the regulatory infrastructure that can support a distributed energy system and a circular materials management system.  The laws and regulations governing utilities are designed for one way flow of power from central power stations to customers distant and connected by wires.  The emerging energy system is based on renewable resources. A distributed energy system accommodates multiple sources of electricity generation from net zero buildings that sometimes produce more energy than they need to microgrids linked with long duration battery storage systems and interconnected with load management software that balances loads and resources.  Customers generate some or all of their own power, from solar PV on their roofs and car batteries in their garages, and utilities struggle to accommodate two-way flows. Many large customers can also generate all of their own power with dedicated systems linked to their unique demands, and drop out of the grid altogether.  We need to examine an update to the laws and regulations governing the production and exchange of power to address the reality of a shifting energy system. A distributed energy system powered by renewable resources can sustain a better future. We need a regulatory infrastructure that enables this transformation in law.

The laws of nature are not negotiable.  As we increase the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the planet will continue to warm. That is just physics. Trump may try to erase Black History. He has reversed decades of policy supporting immigration as America the melting pot. He has re-aligned alliances and trade agreements. He can eliminate public education and limit health care and benefits.  BUT he has no power to change the laws of atmospheric physics and chemistry. He has no power to control the response of living systems, including humans, to changes in the environment.  He has no power to re-write the laws of Nature. We ignore these at our peril.

It is time to put our life support system on the agenda. It is time to protect our world for our children.  We can live without luxury cars. We can live without plastics.  We can live without gilded buildings. We cannot live without oxygen-rich fresh air, or clean water, or fertile ground that provides food. We cannot live without compassion and empathy for each other in communities of caring people. We cannot live without the ecosystems that support life on earth.

Endnotes and Resources:

[1] Environmental Protection Agency. President Trump and Administrator Zeldin Deliver Single Largest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History:Trump Admin Eliminates Obama-Era Endangerment Finding, off-cycle credits, start-stop feature. Feb 12, 2026.  https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/president-trump-and-administrator-zeldin-deliver-single-largest-deregulatory-action-us  Accessed Feb 12, 2026.

[2] Dharna Noor. “Big oil spent $445m in last election cycle to influence Trump and Congress, report says.” The Guardian. 23 Jan 2025.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/23/big-oil-445m-trump-congress   Accessed Feb 12, 2026.

[3]   Urban Institute calculations from the Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers 1962, the Survey of Changes in Family Finances 1963, and the Survey of Consumer Finances 1983–2022.  Urban Institute. April 25, 2024.  https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/

[4] Mills Rodrigo. “America’s Wealthiest Are Getting Even Richer.” Inequality.org. January 31, 2026.     https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/   Accessed Feb. 12, 2026.


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Earth Day 2017- A Call for Earth Teach-Ins

The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970 grew from a rising awareness of the need to protect the environment from the pollution of industry. It started nearly a decade earlier in 1962 with Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring calling attention to

1970 Earth Day Protesters

the effects of pesticides such as DDT on all living things, including people. The practices of the Industrial Revolution produced smoke-filled air, polluted lifeless rivers and toxic waste dumps. The prevailing attitude was that “the solution to pollution is dilution” but by 1970, the environmental laws enacted in the early 1960s had not yet made much effect, and a series of tragedies in 1969 brought sharper focus on the need for a stronger system to defend clean air, safe drinking water, fertile land, and the biodiversity of species. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire and burned down two bridges; an oil tanker ran aground and contaminated the beaches of Santa Barbara; and a spill from a DDT manufacturing plant caused a massive fish kill in the Mississippi River.

From this concentrated spate of outrages, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D) Wisconsin, called for a day of “teach-ins” on Earth Day to raise awareness and call for public action to protect the environment more systematically. There were public seminars in the streets, in union halls, in university courtyards and churches all across the country. Millions of people came to listen, to march and to protest. The result of this effort finally led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1974. It took more than a decade for the alarms Rachel Carson raised to see fruition in a legal apparatus to protect our life support system- fresh air, clean water, fertile ground and the biodiversity of species – the interconnected web of life of which humans are but one part.

In the years since those early days of concern for protecting the environment, a continuous erosion of the power of environmental laws has made its way through amendments, exemptions, and revisions of the laws. Industry has a larger say in the approval of new pesticides, herbicides or synthetic products. Entire industries such as hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas are exempt for seven federal environmental and worker safety protections. The regulatory review process has become so complex that only experts and teams of specialized attorneys can successfully navigate the labyrinth. Regulatory agencies at both federal and state levels have suffered from continuously shrinking budgets, required to do more with less.

More insidiously, industry interests have infiltrated the administration of the regulatory process, to shape the outcome for maximum economic effect, rather than maximum public or environmental health and protection. Doubt, reasonable or otherwise, has replaced reasoned judgment based on the facts of science. Opinion has replaced evidence based on observation and measurement, and political rhetoric has replaced peer-reviewed assessments. President Trump has

Senate confirms EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt 

overtly rejected science as a basis for sound public policy. His appointed, and Senate confirmed, administrators vow to deconstruct the regulatory protections for the environment, for addressing climate change, and for protecting public health and worker safety. His Executive Orders in the first 100 days of his tenure illustrate the ardor of his passion for destruction of all that holds the living Earth dear. National Wildlife Refuges, National Parks, public lands – the legacy of our nation to the future- all fall to the greed of exploitation. The natural resource capital of the nation is squandered for short term corporate profits, while the public taxpayer pays the costs in the form of worse health from air and water pollution, costs for cleaning the public water supplies, or fighting wildfires, floods or droughts from climate change.

Rachel Carson provides a role model for a responsible scientist. She carried the revolutionary passion that all living things have the basic right to exist! She spoke for the unborn

Rachel Carson Testifies to Congress June 1963

of future generations. She spoke for the oceans, forests, grasslands, winged creatures and soil dwellers- the great interconnected web of life. In her testimony to Congress months before her death, she called them to account: “Our heedless and destructive acts enter into the vast cycles of the earth and in time return to bring hazard to ourselves.” This living Earth is the precious hallmark of our planet. This unique living mantle of the Earth evolved to a finely tuned balance over 7,000 years, resting on millions of years of evolution before then. Humans have now strained the limits of the natural systems that keep the living Earth in balance. We see the evidence in the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the consequent acidification of the oceans, rising global temperatures with the consequent melting of glaciers, expansion of drought areas, and more frequent extremes of storm events. Scientists observe, document and measure. We model the possible outcome and attempt to predict what has never happened before in recorded time. We wring our hands, and preach to each other. The journals are filled with data and documentation of ever more dire forecasts. And Trump became President!

We march in protest of his policies. We rise in rage at the folly of ignoring the facts, and despair for our children, and the unborn of all creatures whose fate we shape with our actions today. But, in the mainstream media, nobody reports on the peer-reviewed science. No media cover the extinction of a

Great Coral Reef in Australia- under threat

Monarch butterfly and other pollinators under threat

species, or the effects of destroying the coral reefs, home to 30% of the fishes in the ocean. Ordinary people do not
automatically make the connection between rising global temperatures and the fate of our life support system. People do not make the connection between the death of pollinators and their own lives. They do not read peer-reviewed journals. Why would they?

We who stand as scientists with fists raised in outrage have enjoyed the freedom to pursue intellectual curiosity to the ultimate end of finding truth. We who know have the obligation to inform. Not in a pedantic way, which we can impart through our students. But in the vernacular. In the media. At our dinner tables. In the classrooms and PTA meetings where our children are. In the playgrounds, and on the sidelines where the coaches gather for soccer games or track meets. We need to be in the churches and community centers where people struggle with keeping whole in the face of adversity of all kinds. Science matters in everyone’s daily life. Where are the Teach-ins about climate change? Where are the street theater demonstrations of the better path forward? Where are the scientists at the tables where political decisions are being made? The ivory tower is not where we live. The community needs engaged scientists. The halls of Congress need our voices, as constituents, as experts, and as opinion leaders holding them accountable for their decisions. We need to take the truth to the streets and teach people across all levels to know the difference between manufactured doubt and established facts.

At this pivotal time in history, it is our obligation to speak out. To make our voices heard and to listen to the fears that underlie the obstruction. We are a country that strives for freedom- in markets, in personal pursuits, and in opinions. But freedom without responsibility yields chaos. We are a nation governed by laws, but when the laws are corrupted by greed and protections for private interests over the public good, we have the obligation to speak out, to protest and to demand accountability. The laws of Nature are not negotiable. The path we have set upon with economic profit as the primary determinant of value sets us on a path of certain destruction. Our life support system is being destroyed, and our economy registers only more jobs, more sales for extracted resources, more profits from plundered land. Unless we protect the common necessities for life to exist, we will leave a legacy of an uninhabitable planet. Scientists engaged in the debate, professing hope through better solutions, teaching the ways of life based on the laws of science can shape a better future. We who know have the obligation to act. We who see better options based on facts have the power to change the world. We must reach out beyond our comfort zones. We must invite people in to knowing the facts science can bring to the wonders of our fragile and marvelous living Earth.