Dylan Hull
  Staff Writer

Whether it was to stay informed or enjoy a circus, most people tuned in to the first presidential debate last week.  While the “building the middle class v. tax cuts for corporations” argument gained the most focus, a grand total of 82 seconds were used for environmental platforming, according to a ‘Grist’ article.  

This issue, historically, has gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to debates; with an average of six minutes dedicated to the topic in the sum of the past four debates.  

Whether or not it’s the sexiest issue facing our presidential candidates, it is one of the most serious ones facing the public at large.  In an era where global temperatures are breaking records each year and both public and private institutions successfully evade paying for damage to resources, issues pertaining to our environment need to exist beyond our periphery.

We cannot blind ourselves to certain truths. Climate change is real and we need clean water and air to survive.  Whether out of poor construction and lack of foresight, or sheer happenstance, accidents that affect local ecosystems and our own resources will always happen.  

However meeting these facts on the political battlefield is not always the easiest task.  Traditionally we have implemented benefit-cost analyses, or, when applied directly to new regulatory proposals, regulatory impact analyses.  

These determine how policies are amended, as well as the economic benefit to investing in an amendment, and identifying alternatives that are less costly, yield greater benefits, or both.

This method often comes under heavy scrutiny by environmentalists as ultimately ineffective at reworking old policies and finding alternatives to new and costly amendments.  

Environmentalists and economists have begun to seek different means to analyze potential policy changes. One of these means is environmental accounting, which gives dollar and cent estimates and real world benefits. This, in turn, comes under scrutiny by conservative, trickle down economists.

With most environmental issues, it is difficult to chart plainly to the public what we are doing and how to move away from such practices. Discussing climate change, Walter A. Rosenbaum states in “Environmental Politics and Policy”, “unlike acid precipitation there are no stunted and withered forests to dramatize the problem . . . .”  

Despite the conclusive science, how does one graph the imminent risk of increased greenhouse gas emissions when you cannot look up at the ozone?  

In Florida, the governor refuses even to mention the words “climate change” in documents on environmental policy. Although North Carolina acknowledges human contribution to climate change, they play every card to avoid pledging to the Clean Power Plan proposal. Both of these examples show how states are intentionally leaving people in the dark.  

With these political tactics in play, the public remains largely uninformed of the issues until they reach the precipice of disaster.  It is immoral and un-American to withhold facts from a city, county, or state’s population because of priorities in the private sector, especially when the overwhelming evidence points, indeed, to disaster.

In recent history, weather patterns have been erratic and devastating.  The nor’easter that flooded parts of New Jersey in 2015 and the multiple hits Louisiana has taken from Katrina, Sandy, and the 69 trillion gallons of rainfall accumulated in August have wreaked havoc on the areas, taking hundreds of lives and costing billions of dollars in property damage.

Of course, we will have hurricanes, tropical storms, and seasonal heavy rain, regardless of climate change; however, rising sea levels and conflicting patterns in the air will only intensify the power of these storms. According to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, “eight of the 10 costliest hurricanes on record in the United States have occurred since 2004.”  

A possible way to combat these storms is to fortify our wetlands and dunes to absorb storms. However this is impossible if we lose the Outer Banks and other valuable tidebreaker areas to rising sea levels.  Instead of hoping for the best while planning for the worst, we have only been hoping for the best while policy makers do little to plan for anything at all..  

The world is calling for new regulations, yet our country remains conflicted to make them.  Environmental issues are far from cut and dry quick fixes; however, they demand our constant attention.  

Despite whatever ulterior motive, science must come before politics when it comes to changing policy and creating new regulations to combat climate change.