By Fawn Sharp

President, Quinault Indian Nation

The Trump administration’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Change Agreement was short-sighted and ill-advised. The same goes for the drastic cutbacks the administration has made in climate change response funding and science.

It is beyond reasonable debate to say the climate change challenge is extremely serious and primarily man-caused. It is absolutely real, and it is essential that we act to reduce its impacts in the future. Doing so would be paramount to leaving our children and grandchildren a livable world in which they can breathe easy and quench their thirst without being poisoned.

Isn’t that what all of us want? A world that sustains life? Not just human life, but life in all its diversity and splendor? As the great Chief Seattle once said, “All things are connected.” We cannot allow more species of plants and animals to perish because we failed to answer the call.

Given current conditions, having such a life-sustaining world will not just happen. It will take work, good science and cooperative effort. An integral component of that cooperation should involve Tribal Ecological Knowledge, a deep-seated body of knowledge acquired through thousands of years of experience by indigenous people. More and more scientists are underscoring the value and significance of this body of knowledge.

A report published by BioScience magazine a few years back quoted a group of prominent scientists as saying that Tribal Ecological Knowledge narratives provide a rich source of information based on multi-generational knowledge about local climate that can contribute a great deal to science assessments that provide policy-relevant information. The report also says indigenous knowledge often deepens understanding about what climate change means for livelihoods, cultures and ways of life beyond the understanding provided by statistically significant changes reported in the scientific literature. These narratives show that global climate change has already affected integrated physical, biological and social ecosystems, especially in the northern high latitudes.

Following the release of Al Gore’s latest movie, “An Inconvenient Sequel,” the former vice president said, “The overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists agree: Man-made climate change is a reality. Unless we act now, temperatures will rise beyond our control. We’re looking at a future of seas climbing up our shores; devastating floods, droughts, and storms becoming more frequent facts of life; seasons changing beyond recognition; and dangerous consequences for our health we’re only beginning to understand.”

Hearing such a description, one might be surprised to know Gore is highly optimistic. He says we know how to stop climate change, and we have the tools to do it. We start by ditching the dirty fossil fuels devastating our climate and our health and switching to clean, reliable and affordable renewable energies like wind and solar.

Changing technology means renewables keep getting cheaper, more accessible and more widespread everywhere from rooftops to power plants. Renewable energy costs the same or less than energy from fossil fuels. Several countries’ economies have grown in recent years while their carbon emissions levels dropped. Countries such as Germany now get the majority of their power from renewable sources, and there are days when wind and solar energize their power grid at 100 percent.

The Paris Climate Change Agreement was signed in December 2015 by 195 countries of the world, and strongly supported by tribal leaders. The agreement didn’t contain everything we wanted, but it was a historic achievement, and it put the world on the path to zero carbon emissions as well as a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future. The United States needed to stay the course, not back out.

A primary reason for Al Gore’s optimism has been astonishing surges in the use of clean power sources as opposed to oil and coal. Plus, there have been stunning drops in the cost of wind and solar energy which have turned the global power market upside down.

The administration’s opposition to renewable power and the argument that sun and wind aren’t affordable simply do not hold water. The reality is quite different. Unsubsidized renewables have become the cheapest source of new power. In just one year, the cost of solar generation worldwide dropped on average 17 percent. The average costs for onshore wind dropped 18 percent last year, while those for offshore wind fell 28 percent.

Solar power delivers the cheapest unsubsidized electricity ever, anywhere, by any technology. The federal administration may push as hard as it wants on new coal — opening more public lands to mining, gutting President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. But the hard reality of rapidly declining costs for renewables makes it clear that will be pushing on a string, and a very dirty one at that.