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| Donald Trump is drill baby drill and to hell with climate change. He's bad news for climate. But his attitude might actually go against parts of his (odious) agenda |
He has famously called climate change a hoax. He mocks those worried about sea level rise, dismissing the amount of water level rise as a few hundreds of an inch (it's much more than that), and muses that if there is sea level rise, it will somehow create new ritzy beachfront property.
Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord when he was last president and I'm sure he'll do it again. Climate change laws and policy, like President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, will probably also get kicked to the curb.
As the Associated Press reports:
"These rollbacks will come as more lives are being lost in heat waves, record amounts of climate pollution are accumulating in the atmosphere, the United States has been hit with what may be two of its most expensive hurricanes."
But climate change dangers and deaths are only something the little people have to deal with, right? As long as the billionaires can keep raking in the dough, the pain and suffering felt by victims are climate change are just the cost of doing business.
Against this backdrop, representatives from all over the world are meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan this week for the annual UN climate conference. Lemme guess: Climate activists who will be there are less than thrilled by the outcome of the U.S. election.
They should be disappointed. The United States and China are the world's two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. Likely U.S. inaction on cutting those emissions will make it much harder to achieve climate goals.
Which need to be done now if not sooner.
It's now guaranteed this year will be the world's hottest on record, besting the record set (checks notes) just last year.
Sure, 2025 might end up being a wee bit chillier than 2024, but the trendline is clear. Global temperatures continue to zoom upward and I don't see any signs of it stopping.
Trump of course will make all this worse.
And not just regarding the world's climate. While Trump remains in hoax world, most other nations understand the (big) problem. With a leadership void looming from the United States, other nations, notably China, will be the big influencers.
For a president-elect who's always yapping on about America First, Trump's likely climate inaction will put the U.S. in a secondary position.
After all, nations that lead the charge to revolutionize industry tend to become the dominant players on the world stage. That's how the United States got to the top of the heap through most of the 20th century.
Our innovation, work ethic and overwhelming production made us the undisputed geopolitical leader of the world. America always used to come up with the Next Big Thing. Those days look like they're in the past, especially with the Trump administration looming.
Trump's aversion to innovating our way to climate resilience could well lead us in the direction of failed petrostate. Kind of like Russia is, really, despite its aggression in Ukraine.
In a twisted way, this all makes sense since Trump is such a fan boy of Russia's Vladimir Putin.
Trump is sure to do everything possible that will worsen climate change, as he's convinced reducing greenhouse gases is a money loser. At least for him and his billionaire friend.
Trump is big on oil, to put it mildly.
In fact, back in the spring, during the campaign, Trump met with oil executives to ask for $1 billion in campaign contributions in exchange for Big Oil-friendly policies if elected. And of course Trump was elected.
That kind of deal between Trump and the oil executives probably wasn't illegal, but it was sleazy. And made possible by our bad big money campaign system and a Supreme Court that insists on looking the other way
Trump never did get $1 billion from oil executives, but that industry, along with the gas and mining industry are looking at boom times ahead for them under a Trump administration
Trump was elected because voters perceived him as somebody who will boost the economy for everyone, including his working class fan base. Trump's stance against migrants resonated with voters, as there is indeed a border crisis.
All those migrants trying to stream into the United States do so for lots of reasons. Mostly because of corruption and violence in their home countries. Another small but rising factor leading to more migration is climate change.
Living in a place that's become too hot, too dry, too wet with too many repeated disasters leads to migration. That climate change makes those nations more unstable, too, which also adds to refugees trying to make their way into the United States.
If Trump doesn't want migrants flooding into the United States, combating climate change will be an increasingly important way of accomplishing that.
Worsening and more deadly climate change is only one of many dangerous consequences of Trump's election. There are so many things he can do in his upcoming term that could really have some negative consequences.
I won't get into them here, as it's off topic for this blog. But climate change might be a sleeper issue in this long list of worries.
Frankly, the subject wasn't a hot topic during the campaign. I guess climate change is too abstract a concept for people who won't, or more likely can't pay attention, due to their own busy lives.
In a previous post-election column, I said that reality has a way of coming back to bite you in the ass. Climate change is one of those ass-biting realities. Trump would be wise to take note.
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