It’s amazing just how devoted Donald Trump is to recreating the past. He’s not just utterly fixated on industries that were hot when he was thirty—coal, steel, and automobiles—he’s so resistant to allowing any new knowledge into the world that he instinctively fights against anything learned after he passed out of junior pretending-to-be-in-the-army school. Trump’s response to the overwhelming success and opportunity presented by renewable energy is to do everything possible to back coal. Facing a transition in transportation, Trump is increasing drilling for oil, reducing the standards for both mileage and emissions for gas vehicles, and planning to end tax incentives for electric vehicles. And, of course, when confronted with the idea that living like the 1960s never ended is driving the world’s climate back to ranges not seen during the entire span of the human species, Trump’s reaction is simply to make things worse in every way. He’s not a climate change denier, he’s a climate change promoter. As in he wants more. Quicker.
The New York Times reports on Trump’s abject denial of the latest and most comprehensive report on climate to come from officials in his own White House.
In almost two years since taking office, Mr. Trump has denied the scientific reality of climate change and taken aggressive steps that will increase emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — despite unequivocal scientific evidence that those pollutants are warming the planet to dangerous levels.
It’s not simply that Trump isn’t helping to make things better. He’s actively working to make things worse. There’s a perversity in his actions, a conviction that he’s right, everyone else is wrong, and he’s willing to burn down the planet to prove it.
In the Tuesday White House press conference Sarah Sanders made it clear that Trump refused to believe the report on climate change because it was based on “modeling” rather than “data.” In other words Trump will not even consider the idea of climate change until after it happens. Which is not only infuriating, but also a lie. Because Trump has adamantly refused to recognize the climate change that has already taken place. Just last week he pointed to cold temperatures on the East Coast as “proof” that climate change didn’t exist. Or that it would “go back,” as he insists on saying. Because it was cold. On that day. Where he lived.
At its core, Trump’s denial of climate change isn’t just in spite of evidence, it’s … in spite. He’s 72. He’s not healthy. And if he has to go, he’s taking everyone else with him.
The report Mr. Trump referred to, the National Climate Assessment, issued on Friday, was the product of four years of work by 13 federal agencies. It concluded that “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,” and adds, “the severity of future impacts will depend largely on actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe, who contributed to the report, has a thread on Twitter, explaining not just why Trump is wrong about the report, but why the reporting on the report is allowing the information there to be misrepresented. Hayhoe notes that while Sanders and Trump has indicated that the report is “extreme” it actually presents scenarios from all across the board. It’s just that we’ve reached a point where even the most conservative scenarios are still disastrous.
As the New York Times reports, accelerating climate change isn’t a accidental outcome of the Trump policies, it’s a core function.
But in his disregard for scientific evidence, Mr. Trump has made the dismantling of policies to curb greenhouse pollution a centerpiece of his deregulatory agenda.
Just ahead of us, the bridge is out. Trump is constantly receiving reports notifying him that the bridge is out. He’s not just ignoring those reports. He’s greasing the rails.
When the next round of climate disasters strike, Trump will deny them again, and find a way to make things even worse. Because making things worse is what he wants. If he can get this planet to the point where it’s positioned to become a miserable hellhole perched on the edge of certain doom … actually, it’s there already. And Trump is pushing.