Idiot America
Fossil fuels-soaked planned obsolescence and hastened extinction is official U.S. policy
The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School has a Climate Backtracker database that identifies steps taken by the Trump regime 2.0 to scale back or wholly eliminate federal climate mitigation and adaptation measures. To date, the tracker displays 315 such backtracking efforts across the federal government under this regime.
Of the myriad atrocities found on this list, three stick out as especially heinous: removal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accords (effective January 27, 2026); Withdrawing the U.S. from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC - initiated on January 7, 2026 and effective January 7, 2027); and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revocation of the endangerment finding —the bedrock scientific determination that the EPA made in 2009 that greenhouse gas emissions like CO2 and methane pose a threat to public health and safety as they build up in the atmosphere and should be regulated.
Following the Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which allowed the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, the EPA amassed an enormous amount of irrefutable scientific evidence that greenhouse gases cause global warming and climate destabilization and must be carefully regulated to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, as well as to adapt and adjust to the unavoidable changes already locked in.
The greenhouse effect has been understood since at least the 18th Century. As far back as the first decade of the 20th Century, newspaper articles were discussing the possibility that burning coal might be causing a warming effect on the planet. By the 1950s, scientists who worked for the oil industry were making predictions about global warming that would prove in the decades ahead to be eerily accurate.
The existence and severity of anthropogenic (human-caused) global climate change are not controversial to anyone who understands even rudimentary levels of applicable science. The problem today is not a lack of awareness or understanding; it is those with vested interests in denial and delay of action. These special interests are who Trump and the rest of this regime are serving in the short term, while majorly contributing to both short-and-long-term devastation globally.
Climate change represents a tragedy of the commons—a theory popularized in 1968 by ecologist Garrett Hardin that posits that open-access resources, like the atmosphere of the earth, are overexploited when users prioritize immediate and personal gain over collective sustainability and benefit. How do you convince people as selfish and narcissistic as Trump, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum or Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright to care about collective well-being and a healthy, stable planet? The short answer is that you don’t.
In West Virginia, our republican supermajority state legislature and MAGA cultists Governor and State Attorney General are just as hellbent on steering our state into the abyss as the Trump regime is with the entire country. The republicans have passed bills for data center buildout in the state that allows these water and energy hogs to scar and pollute our communities—in fact, some of our most prestigious places of unmatched beauty in Tucker, Mingo and Mason Counties—all while depriving localities of tax dollars, with very few permanent or long-term jobs created.
If that weren’t bad enough, now the state is considering legislation that would lower the severance tax on natural gas for new wells/fracking sites, all while the companies Hope Gas and Mountaineer gas in West Virginia have been granted and are seeking massive rate hikes, respectively. Hope Gas services the area where I live in Parkersburg, WV. According to reporting by Charleston Gazette-Mail energy and environmental reporter Mike Tony, “The average annual residential customer bill for 2024 was $864.35, with an average monthly payment of $72.03, according to case testimony.” Tony also reported the following:
“Hope Gas drew the ire of its captive ratepayers as its request was pending via an announcement it agreed to pay $2 million annually for the next 10 years for the naming rights to West Virginia University’s basketball arena”
According to the United States Energy Information Agency, natural gas production in West Virginia went up from about 250,000 cubic feet in the year 2000 to almost 3.5 million cubic feet in 2024, all without additional tax incentives. Production certainly didn’t decrease in 2025 or so far in 2026. And much of the gas fracked from the Marcellus and Utica shale plays in the OH, WV, PA area does not stay in Central Appalachia. It is either pipelined to southern states or hauled away to be liquified and shipped overseas. Clearly all this production is not saving West Virginians money on our utility bills.
I have gas utilities in my home. Our boiler system, stove, water heater and I believe our clothes dryer are all gas-fueled. But my wife and I have invested in insulation and siding and a new garage door and are replacing windows, all to make our home as energy efficient as possible. We’ve also contracted with the company Solar Holler to lease a 14.62kW, 34-panel solar array for our home that will save us a tremendous amount on our power bills and allow us to use far less coal-fired grid energy.
We’ve been fortunate to be able to access the capital to make these upgrades and additions to our home and to be able to purchase new a 2022 Kia Niro Touring edition hybrid vehicle that gets 54mpg. This is our only vehicle and with normal driving we can fill our hybrid up once a month for $20-$25 or less, even when gas is over $3/gallon. We use battery-powered lawn equipment and put yard waste in paper biodegradable bags. We recycle and compost everything we can. We’re trying.
Government at all levels should be using public policy to make it as easy and affordable as possible for everyone, regardless of income or where they live, to adopt renewable energy, maximize energy efficiencies and to live more sustainably overall. Such policy should be a no-brainer. But no. Greedy fossil fuel and related or derivative interests and their bought-and-paid-for politicians are leaving us paying far more than we should for our energy and products and destroying the habitability of our only home in the cosmos.
I’m registered with no party affiliation but republican rule is killing us—literally. Elections matter. Democrats can be forced to listen and change course far more easily than the GOP (which now apparently stands for “Guardians Of Pedophiles” as opposed to “Grand Old Party”). Many Democratic officeholders and candidates will require no change of course or compulsion to listen; they’re already on the side of justice for working-class people and our health and lived environments. It’s a crucial election year. Vote accordingly.