The Trump Administration has rolled out dozens of executive orders signed by the President proclaiming emergencies in various spheres of American life including the environment, energy, immigration, and trade.

In a February 14 NPR article on Trump's executive order declaring a national energy emergency, he was quoted as saying "That's a big one. You know what that allows you to do? That means you can do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem." Actually, emergency declarations don't grant unlimited powers, but they do grant expansive powers. Trump's January 20 declaration of a national energy emergency mentioned emergency powers related to military construction, as well as emergency provisions in the clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act that might speed up permitting for some energy projects. It stated that energy production was not meeting the nation's needs, even though U.S. production has been at record highs. He also directed federal agencies to explore which other emergency authorities could promote the production of energy, at least some forms of energy: oil and gas were emphasized, and wind and solar were excluded. 

On May 9, according to the New York Times, fifteen states sued the Trump administration over its declaration of an "energy emergency," arguing that there is no emergency and that the order instructs regulators to illegally bypass reviews of fossil fuel projects, potentially damaging the environment. The lawsuit argued that President Trump's declaration meant that reviews required by environmental laws like the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Historic National Preservation Act were being shortened or skipped. Note that the US Energy Information Administration in March 2024 stated that, "The United States produced more crude oil than any nation at any time...for the past six years." Additionally, U.S. crude oil production has risen since March 2024, according to YCHARTS. 

Also, on January 20 Trump declared an emergency on the southern border. That executive order, which opened with the words, "America's sovereignty is under attack," revived his first-term argument that he can use emergency powers to redirect military resources toward building a border wall and other immigration-related actions. 

The president has also discussed using a law called the Alien Enemies Act to gain emergency powers that would let him bypass some normal immigration laws in a deportation push. In early February, Trump used that "emergency" on the border — plus concerns about the fentanyl crisis — as the legal justification for tariffs imposed on China and threatened against Canada and Mexico.

The above NPR article proceeded to state that Trump can impose tariffs without an emergency, using powers delegated to him by Congress. That's how he put tariffs on aluminum, steel and Chinese goods in his first administration and how he may impose reciprocal tariffs on a slew of countries. However, it requires following a specific process and soliciting public input. Emergency powers speed things up. 

It is difficult to say with a straight face that immigration at our southern border is an emergency, when unauthorized immigration at the southern border has been occurring ever since I can remember (I am 72) and that the number of unauthorized border-crossers had plummeted drastically in 2024 due to executive actions taken by President Biden early that year. Also, it has been well-documented in multiple studies that the crime rate in immigrants is significantly less than in native-born Americans. According to one analysis of arrest statistics in Texas published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December 2020, "contrary to public perception, we observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years."  Other studies show that undocumented immigrants are 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a crime and that US-born citizens are over two times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over four times more likely to be arrested for property crimes. 

So if our access to energy (though it may be polluting and climate-changing) is not an emergency and immigration crime is not an emergency, what are the true national emergencies?

A May 10 New York Times article stated that the Trump administration has directed agencies virtually to stop estimating the economic impact of climate change when developing policies and regulations. No Problem Here! Known as the "social cost of carbon," the metric reflects the estimated damage from global warming, including wildfires and droughts. It affixes a cost to the economy from one ton of carbon dioxide pollution, the main greenhouse gas that heats the planet. When considering a regulation or policy to limit carbon pollution, policymakers have weighed the cost to an industry of meeting that requirement against the economic impact of that pollution on society. Scientists and environmental groups say that the Trump administration is denying reality. "It’s very clear that climate change is causing harms to people in the United States and around the world, and that these harms are growing worse with increasing warming,” said Robert E. Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University. “By effectively saying the social cost of carbon should be treated as zero, this policy arbitrarily and capriciously ignores the science and economics of climate change.”

Also in that article, Michael Greenstone, an economist at the University of Chicago who first came up with the idea of the social cost of carbon as a justification for climate policy, said the new guidance means “feelings, not facts” would guide federal policy. “The decision is like Alice in Wonderland’s Humpty Dumpty, who said ‘Words can mean whatever I choose them to mean."

A very real and worsening emergency is climate change. It is caused by people burning, transporting, and drilling for fossil fuels and by other human-related activities. The production of cement and concrete produces vast amounts of carbon dioxide, which warms our atmosphere. Livestock and the disposal of organic wastes in landfills produce substantial amounts of methane (an even more potent climate-warming gas). Our environment is heating up as year after year we reach a record high average global temperature. This heating promotes various effects in different parts of the earth, including stronger hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, fires, crop failures, loss of glaciers, decrease and loss of freshwater lakes and ponds, thinning of polar ice and loss of icebergs, decrease and change of animal and plant species, sea level rise with accompanied coastal flooding, weather and crop failure-related immigration, political instability, and significant economic losses. 

We must make our voices heard loudly and repeatedly until these policies are reversed and these true national, indeed global emergencies are addressed and taken care of. Mother Nature is being fooled with in a very unkind and dangerous way and the cost to our planet and our lives will continue to be felt ever-more severely by all of us unless we take effective and sustained action. 

Write or call your federal representatives on a regular basis to let them know how you feel. Post on social media the truth about climate change and its effects on all of us. Attend rallies on a regular basis to let your neighbors know how you feel about the government's actions. Contribute to environmental organizations with your time and money. You count and do make a difference!