Dear Editor:
Like all ocean shoreline areas, coastal Georgia is at increasing risk from rising sea-level, flooding, and health hazards caused by pollution overheating our climate. Worldwide, climate change is linked to trillions-of-dollars annually in harm caused by wildfires, crop-loss, flashfloods, and heat-related disease. Last year, over $180 billion in such damages were suffered in the U.S. due to rising temperatures, and those costs are rapidly climbing.
Accordingly, it is deeply troubling that Trump’s EPA has eliminated the 2009 finding that heat-trapping emissions causing climate change are pollutants properly regulated under the Clean Air Act. Abandoning the EPA “endangerment” ruling is a flagrantly irresponsible action, coerced by powerful corporate fossil-fuel interests that enormously profit through it.
By rejecting well-documented scientific research justifying rigorous climate safeguards, compromised political transactions are prioritizing short-term special interests at the expense of Americans’ long-term health, safety, and prosperity.
Further evidence of this reckless negligence is provided by the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology that’s dependent on intensive use of energy consumed by datacenters that store and process enormous volumes of information in digital circuits. Georgia Power is planning 10,000 megawatts of new power-generation – the greatest phase of energy expansion in state history – primarily to meet anticipated demands of artificial intelligence.
It’s tragically ironic that the deceptive denial of climate science will impose massive human suffering by willfully neglecting the leap in heat-trapping pollution emitted by fossil-fuel based powerplants to be built in serving datacenters. Georgia’s role as “most business-friendly state” has never been more defiantly foolhardy.
David Kyler, Center for a Sustainable Coast, St. Simons Island, Georgia
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