Climate change and the catastrophe of Trumpism

As biodiversity decreases there will undoubtedly be alarming consequences. This includes disruptions in the food chains – for example, changes in the insect species will decrease plant pollination. Further, the diminished plant diversity will impact our ability to produce essential medications to care for our aging population. Finally, naturally occurring biodiversity protects our planet from natural disasters, without which, our forests and coastlines more vulnerable than ever.

As Theodore Roosevelt observed, "the loss is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time." The diversity and richness of life forms have value in themselves, as organs created by Nature to perceive Nature. With the extinction of a species the world itself has diminished in richness - for not only is it no longer perceived or approached in the way specific to the form of life, but the very interiority of Nature, we might say, has been reduced.

The administration's response to what is currently happening is a moral outrage – and it was made possible by a readiness to forsake our epistemic duty to follow where the evidence leads. We are in the midst of a moral and epistemic crisis: this administration has to be held fully accountable for its foolish decision to ignore the reality and mock the scientific consensus.

Trump disgraces this nation everyday with his rejection of basic decency, his gross and palpable lying, his use of cruelty and humiliation in place of rational argumentation. In attacking the media and the freedom of the press, he disgraces his office: using it only to aggrandize himself and punish those with whom his personal interests conflict. But history may yet determine that his greatest disgrace was to willfully and gratuitously ignore the reality of anthropogenic climate change when the time to act was at its most critical.