Climate of fear
As California burns, President Trump’s words and actions do nothing but fan the flames for those who deny global warming
AMID an increasing number of hurricanes and a backdrop of historic wildfires ravaging America’s west coast, Donald Trump arrived in California to offer his own assessment.
Faced with increasing evidence of the damage mankind is inflicting on Mother Nature, the President made clear his views.
To him it’s not climate change driving the ever-worsening fires we live with, it’s the exploding trees and dried leaves.
If California would just clean up its mess and do more forest management, the problems, he assures us, would go away.
But anyone who thought that was a concern, need to have braced themselves for what was about to come.
In what can only be seen as his most alarming statement on global warming – and boy there have been many – the climate-denier-in-chief gave an insight into his thinking.
While sitting among scientists, experts and California’s political leaders, the State’s Secretary for Natural Resources, Wade Crowfoot, urged Trump to fully acknowledge the role of global warming in making the fires worse.
“If we ignore that science and put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed at protecting Californians,” he said.
What followed was simply jaw-dropping.
“It’ll start getting cooler,” Trump replied. “You just watch.”
“I wish science agreed with you,” Crowfoot said.
“Well, I don’t think science knows actually,” Trump retorted, laughing.
Trump’s words were met with disdain as well as sheer panic by scientists tasked with tackling the ever-warming planet.
Just days later, as huge Antarctic glaciers continue to fall apart leading to worries of a global sea-level rise, the Trump administration added another climate denier to lead an agency that is supposed to follow the science.
The White House tapped David Legates, an academic who has earned infamy in his attacks on climate change evidence, to help run the agency that produces much of the research funded by the US government. It was like putting Ronald McDonald in charge of vegetarianism.
Legates’ appointment threatens to upend an agency that produces
some of the best Earth science research in the world – and that has, so far, managed to keep doing credible work even as Trump has done all he can to belittle their findings.
It is why the stakes in the coming election are so high.
Since coming to power, Trump has exited the Paris Agreement, loosened restrictions on toxic air pollution, rolled back clean water protections and removed climate change from a list of national security threats.
Yet earlier this month, while on the campaign trail in Florida ahead of November’s election, he stood in front of his supporters and declared himself “a great environmentalist”.
To be clear, there is no other policy that could be more jarring than his approach to the planet.
The choice facing voters who care about the future could not be starker.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden believes the scientific consensus about climate change and wants America to lead the world in a shift to clean energy.
Trump has called it all a “hoax” and advocated greater production and burning of “beautiful, clean coal”.
All of the “natural” disasters we are now experiencing were foreseen long ago by scientists who warned of the consequences of releasing massive quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
They said the world would become hotter, drier and more susceptive to fire.
They said tropical storms would become less predictable and more common and that rising sea levels would put coastal cities in greater danger.
And they said that if we don’t take co-ordinated action to limit carbon emissions, these life-threatening impacts will get much, much worse.
Despite this reality, the President has done everything he can to go against it all.
Calling himself a great environmentalist is Trump’s dirtiest joke of all.
Let us hope for Mother Nature’s sake, the punchline does not continue after the election.