What to think before we: Drill, baby drill

Donald Trump is about to become 47ᵗʰ President of the United States of America. It’s expected Washington D.C. will also welcome back a caboodle of climate deniers, environment cynics and resource raiders. A profusion of such advisers in his last Presidency steered Trump towards several damaging decisions, including weakening regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, lowering fuel economy and mercury pollution norms and limiting rules governing the emissions of methane — 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming Earth — in oil and gas production. And that’s just a short list. With the return of eco-extortionists, shouting, ‘Drill, baby, drill!’, it’s not unreasonable to say nature stands in peril.
Yet, pinning the entire climate catastrophe onto Donald Trump is also unfair. After all, he was in the shadows for much of 2024 which has become the warmest year in Earth’s history, the first to exceed 1.5ºC from pre-industrial levels, with 44% of the globe affected by heat stress, atmospheric water at record highs. These climatic anomalies caused unprecedented storms, droughts and wildfires, even now, many hills in California ablaze. The truth, acrid but inescapable (rather like emissions) is that with or without Donald Trump, we seem bent on destroying Earth. Despite the warnings and indeed, the evidence before our eyes, inside our lungs and cloaking our brains (literally as particulate matter lowers IQ), emissions increased in 2024. It is egregious to only blame Trump for we are all contributing to Earth’s meltdown. Most nations continue investing in fossil fuels and most people consume blithely, like there is no tomorrow.
The fault lies in our mindset — as Times Evoke’s global experts emphasise, we are gripped by a fossil fuel attitude to life, which sees the environment as endless resources for rampaging, refuses to acknowledge the violence this unleashes on the less powerful and resorts even to war to keep fuelling greed. This approach is making Earth — a miracle of sparkling, beautiful life in a dark universe — crumble, even as we buy more gadgets and deforest more lands, so we can enjoy 30 new kinds of sugar, sorry, coffee.
However, as Donald Trump’s Presidency unfolds, we can also make a pledge ourselves. Let’s envision how to lower our own emissions and consider the many lives, including those of animals, fossil fuelled consumption impacts. We can even smile for we have the great promise before us of renewable energy — this must be adopted widely and with more awareness and empathy than fossil fuels ever were. Join Times Evoke in exploring the rhythm which ferociously drums — ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ — for we can still create a softer, better music.