Have you driven up toward the Santa Fe, New Mexico ski area recently? Once you leave the residential areas you will see tens of thousands of trees dying all over the mountains. Trees die fast and the carnage is shocking. Everywhere you look it seems most of the firs and pines are brown.
This is not normal. Other Rocky Mountain states have already seen massive tree die-offs. New Mexico is next.
Why are the trees dying? They die because forest soils that used to stay moist year-round are usually dry now, and the tree’s roots cannot find enough water to survive. The forest soil is dry because the atmosphere is much warmer than it was a decade ago and more evaporation is happening from the soil and from the needles and leaves of the trees. Trees stressed this way are vulnerable to bark beetles, moths, tent caterpillars, sudden death, and extreme wildfire. Scientists predict that by 2050 most of the forests in the Southwest will convert to brush and grass as our climate continues to warm and dry.
Some will say we are experiencing a normal drought cycle, and we shouldn’t worry about it. Real science doesn’t support that view. Research by multiple scientists shows that the current drought in the Southwest is the worst since around 1500 and even if it fits past drought patterns, climate warming is amplifying its effects. The results can be seen in our mountains, both in terms of dead trees and the scars of recent high severity fires.
It would be nice to imagine that the federal government was responding to the death of our forests by confronting climate change. Instead, the opposite is happening. Donald Trump’s personal belief is that climate change is “a hoax” and efforts to address it are an attack on him and the American economy.
Trump has structured his administration so that his ideas are not challenged from within and all federal agencies now officially deny that climate change is real. Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently released a 141-page report authored by oil industry scientists that supports Trump’s denial of global warming. Trump’s main advisor Russel Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget has been purging all agencies that deal with the environment, firing scientists and erasing decades of weather and other data while quashing climate studies in the government and in universities. Vought has fired hundreds of employees at national labs that research renewable energy, and he has kneecapped the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
This ideological extremism is doing massive damage to US science programs that countries all over the world depend on. Following Trump, the official policy of most republican politicians is that pollution shouldn’t be controlled, oil, gas and coal are the only reliable energy sources, oil drilling is the highest use of public land, and solar and wind power “don’t work” (as Trump has said) and should not be supported by federal or state incentives.
Thus, the federal government is actively reversing decades of work to curb air pollution that causes climate change. He revoked billions in renewable energy grants. This backward policy will cost Americans trillions of dollars over time and thousands of people will die as fires, storms, floods, and heat waves ravage our communities.
Meanwhile electricity demand in the US is skyrocketing as crypto currency and artificial intelligence (AI) demand vast amounts of power in big inefficient data centers. Wind and solar could meet much of that demand if it were not thwarted by this administration.
This is a tragic, historic, perfect storm.
