Climate Change and Health

June 12, 2025: Notes from the Chair - June 2025

In keeping with the decision made by the SoDak 350 Board of Directors to focus, at least into the fall of this year, on the broader issue of tyranny and turmoil in Washington while maintaining our ongoing efforts to impact climate change - we begin this month, highlighting the real impact of Trump’s mega bill and then linking it to the impact of climate change on health.

An article in the New York Times from June 9th by Sam Whitney, Seven Hidden Ways Trump’s Megabill Would Remake America is important.

Mr. Whitney begins by saying, "Whatever else can be said against the One Big, Beautiful Bill, the 1,037-page legislation carrying President Trump’s domestic agenda, at least the grandiosity of its name reflects the grandiosity of its ambition. Far more expensive than the pandemic stimulus package Mr. Trump signed in his first term, the bill would provide some $3.8 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy, paid for by cutting over a trillion dollars from government programs and borrowing most of the rest… Mr. Trump and his allies have worked hard to conceal the true impact it would have on the country, falsely casting it as a golden deal with no downside for the American people."

He then goes on to list the seven hidden ways. Briefly:

A presidential power grab by burying a provision in the bill that would prevent

courts for threatening to hold parties who refused to comply with court orders

by threatening to hold them in contempt - including the executive branch. This

would be a significant and fundamental constitutional change in the authority of

the judicial branch.

A sicker America caused by a reduction in the federal Medicaid budget by at

least $600 billion over the decade. That would be the largest cut the program

has faced since its inception.

A little less public spending, a lot fewer public benefits based on estimates from

the Congressional Budget Office that the bill would cut federal spending by 1.3

trillion over the decade. The largest component of that - cuts to Medicaid

followed by the curtailment or elimination of other programs such as clean and

energy subsidies from the inflation reduction act.

The next three are: immigration, a blueprint for national fear, more economic

turmoil and isolation, and a weaker military.

The seventh is dirtier, more dangerous air because the bill would prevent

America from innovating in the energy sector and make the country poorer —

but Americans, by and large, wouldn’t feel that.

What they would feel is what this bill would do to their air. By slowing the rollout

of renewable energy and by removing incentives for Americans to buy electric

vehicles, the bill would increase the amount of coal, natural gas and oil burned

nationwide, making pollution far worse. That means more microscopic scraps of

soot could enter Americans’ lungs and bloodstream, endangering their health,

not to mention the 50,000 to 350,000 premature deaths in United States that are

attributed to fossil fuel each year.

None of this should surprise any of us and that is especially true about the bills’ impact on health and climate change. Since January 20th the Trump administration has basically gutted the EPA along with most provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as all national and global commitments to transition to a renewable future.

As clear evidence of this, simply read an article by Lisa Friedman again in the New York Times from Saturday, May 24, 2025, titled Documents Show E.PA. Wants to Erase Greenhouse Gas Limits on Power Plants. The article summarizes a draft of a plan to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases from coal and gas-fired power plants in United States. The EPA is at the epicenter of this effort, and in recent weeks Mr. Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, has shuttered offices responsible for regulating climate change and air pollution and has launched the repeal of more than two dozen regulations and policies. Mr. Zeldin is quoted as saying that deregulation would drive “a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”

But let’s be absolutely clear: There is a direct and overwhelming impact of climate

change on health - summarized by the following graphic from CDC:

Here are a few specific examples given by former Vice President Al Gore at a training session organized by the climate reality project earlier this year:

• Many parts of the tropics in particular, home to 3 billion people, will experience “unlivable” heat and humidity if global temperatures rise more than 1.5° C.

• In another example of “compound events,” researchers have found that wildfire smoke causes more hospitalizations for heart and lung ailments during periods of extreme heat.

• Worldwide, air pollution from fossil fuels kills 8.7 million people every year.

• For every 1° C in temperature rise, the number of stillbirths and premature deliveries increases by about 5%. For poor women and those who work outdoors, the problem is worse. 

• As the climate changes and humans expand further into Earth’s remaining wild places, five new infectious diseases are emerging, on average each year.

• More than two-thirds of waterborne disease outbreaks in the U.S. have been preceded by extreme precipitation events.

• The 10 hottest years on record have been the last 10 years.

And certainly, the impact of climate change on health affects South Dakota as well - with increased risk of transmission of West Nile virus, increased frequency of drought and severe flooding, increased emergency room visits and admissions to hospital for patients with asthma or chronic obstructive lung disease especially during high temperatures and/or wildfire -induced increases in airborne particulate matter, and on and on and on…

The devastation of the EPA, the arrogant and uninformed assault on all efforts to impact climate change, the active disregard for the rule of law and for the Constitution, the assault on science in general and on the role and responsibility of the CDC and the NIH to name just a few  - are interconnected, written democracy, create instability and fear and can be overwhelming.

Our responsibility, however, for us and for our children and our grandchildren and our community and our country - is to not be overwhelmed, but rather to stand up and refuse to yield.

Finally remember Timothy Snyder’s important monograph called On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century including do not obey in advance, defend institutions, standout, believe in truth, investigate, be a patriot, and be as courageous as you can.