On February 12, Donald Trump signed an executive order ending all regulations pertaining to greenhouse gas emissions — the gasses that cause climate change/global warming.

The justifications were that the regulations caused higher production expenses affecting our economy and that Trump did not believe that the climate studies done, showing the relationship between six greenhouse gasses and climate change, were valid.

Despite the fact that a substantial majority of environmental scientists support the findings, Trump does not. Scientist Trump?

Sadly, I am not surprised that Generations Y and Z aren’t putting up a whimper about this, even though they and the Alpha Generation will be most affected as time passes.

Lower prices will be seen soon. The effects of climate change take a little longer.

But these effects are of a global nature affecting all of humanity. With the emissions regulations, the United States was the world’s second largest producer of greenhouse gasses. China is the largest. (China’s population: 1.4 billion; U.S. pop. 342 million) I would strongly argue that global warming is far more serious than what happened to George Floyd, Rachel Good, and Alex Pretti.

Over the past 30 years, especially during the current decade, we have continually seen new records set year after year for higher average global temperatures, more frequent and more severe tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and floods. This increase is a result of climate change.

As early as the 1993, the American Red Cross noticed this trend of more frequent and severe weather disasters in the United States, comparing its significantly increased disaster relief work in the late ’80s and early ’90s with that of the ’70s and early ’80s. Today of course, the need for American Red Cross disaster relief work is so much greater than it ever was in the ’90s.

In the early twentieth century, people learned that the environment could suffer irreparable damage if neglected. Birds became extinct due to the desire for beautiful feathers for women’s hats. Flood damage became serious in locations of over-logging of trees. The ground that was once able to sustain farming, blew away in the wind due to ignorant farming practices, creating the Dust Bowl.

In the ’60s, the Los Angeles metropolitan area had so much heavy, visible auto air pollution, that never went away, that the term “smog” was created. Smog could be regularly found 30 miles from the city. In 1969, Cleveland’s primary river, the Cuyahoga, caught fire for the third time. This was “the last straw” that prompted President Nixon to create the Environmental Protection Agency. Enough was enough. We were killing ourselves.

Mother Earth is a gift from God, showing great need for care and attention. To this notion, the United States appear to be saying, “We don’t want to be bothered.”

We have learned in the past that serious neglect causes serious consequences — sometimes even more serious than we imagined.