Given Donald Trump's denial of human-influenced climate change, what kind of world awaits us environmentally if he should get his way?
Here is the sorry picture. Cities increasingly are choked by lung-irritating photochemical smog. Cases of asthma and other respiratory ailments greatly escalate, and mortality rates rise accordingly. Many urban dwellers routinely wear air filter masks when venturing outside during the most pollution-prone months of the year.
Unprecedented heat waves in the summer months force the elderly and infirm to remain primarily indoors. Indeed, where possible, our cities air condition their armories and other public buildings to serve as long-term emergency shelters for citizens who have run out of options.
Tropical maladies spread northward with the migration of warm weather disease-carrying insects. Coastal communities are besieged by rising sea levels, and in some instances start to relocate inland.
Trump himself is impacted, and it isn't pretty. Not only is it often too hot to play on his golf courses. His interior-situated golf courses turn brown from protracted drought, and his coastal holdings are plagued by rising sea levels, significantly devaluing the worth of the properties.
Antipathy to regulation has consequences for the briny deep as well.Due to overfishing and ocean pollution, many popular species no longer are found in the supermarket. The fish on display are priced beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest Americans.
Because of the greater intensity and frequency of destructive major climatic events such as hurricanes and record floods and drought, additional taxes are levied to help pay for the massive increase in damage to life and property.
President Obama's Clean Water Rule protected streams responsible for filling the drinking water needs of 117 million Americans. True to his word, Trump revoked the rule. The result--diminished water quality for a third of the nation, increased algae blooms in the Great Lakes, and an expanded oxygen-depleted "dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico.
Air and water quality further deteriorate along with concomitant human health as the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory authority (including restraints on fracking) is cut to the bone.
Oil derricks dot much of the federal landscape. To raise revenue, restrictions are lifted to allow casinos and luxury resorts to operate within the confines of our most famed national parks. Speaking of which, there are many more distressing changes, thanks to changing climes. For example, Glacier National Park is devoid of glaciers, and Florida's Everglades National Park is severely degraded by salt water intrusion.
So welcome to Donald Trump's world. It is where we are heading if his largely do-nothing response to climate change and his anti-environmental regulatory trajectory prevail.