When I was young, my favorite author was Milan Kundera, who wrote the popular novel, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” and also the novel, “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.”
The second novel is about Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968. Until then, Czechoslovakia was a democratic country with a thriving, free, and happy population. When the occupation occurred, the Soviets launched an aggressive program of organized forgetting. As America moves into 2025, I’ve been thinking a lot about one of the quotes from the book and how it relates to what’s currently happening with America’s climate policy, and not just its climate policy. “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long a nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.”
With the quote in mind, here’s what’s happened to America’s climate plans over the last month, all executed with the stroke of a pen and a blatant disregard for science.
- The new administration is eliminating all references to climate change or the climate crisis on any U.S. government website. It’s as if, with the stroke of a pen, the crisis no longer exists.
- An executive order, “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements,” ordered the United States withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement for the second time. This decision isolates the U.S. from global climate efforts, eliminates its influence in international environmental policy, and pulls the U.S. out of all collaborative initiatives focused on combating climate change.
- The president declared a national energy emergency designed to boost domestic fossil fuel production by suspending environmental regulations. As part of the declaration, the administration paused support for renewable energy projects, including the suspension of new wind energy leases on federal lands and waters. In addition, federal subsidies for electric vehicle adoption are repealed. The disbursement of funds for renewable energy projects under the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Act has been paused and is pending review. Programs like the American Climate Corps, which I’ve written about before, aimed at developing a renewable energy work force, are terminated.
- The administration reversed water and energy restrictions on toilets and energy-efficient lightbulbs. This may result in higher energy consumption, increased utility costs, and more significant environmental impacts.
- The administration has directed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to roll back fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. This may lead to increased fuel expenses for consumers and higher greenhouse gas emissions.
- The administration has pledged to increase American oil and natural gas exports. For instance, a recent agreement with India aims to supply more U.S. fossil fuels to meet India’s growing energy demands. This strategy may bolster the U.S. energy sector and trade balance but raises environmental concerns related to fossil fuel extraction and consumption.
- U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has publicly criticized net-zero carbon emission targets, describing them as “sinister.”
The question is not whether these recent decisions will have consequences—these policy changes will most likely impact residents of Harvard and of every town and city across America. The real question is how much we are willing to sacrifice before we decide that no single person’s signature should wield this much power over the air, water, and earth that sustain us all.
A pen can sign executive orders. A pen can revoke them. And a pen, when wielded without wisdom, can write the undoing of our climate and ourselves.
Rich Marcello is a member of the Climate Initiative Committee. In writing his latest novel, “The Means of Keeping,” he spent several years researching the climate crisis.
