The President-Elect will attempt to reverse all plans for environmental progress

On January 20, President-Elect Donald Trump will become the only world leader to deny the science of climate change, according to a 2016 study by the Sierra Club. Trump has been vociferous in his denialism, calling climate change a “mythical,”“nonexistent,” and a “hoax created by and for the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

On the day of the presidential election, the World Meteorological Organization reported that the past five years were the hottest on record. In fact, they state that the first half of 2016 was 1.3 ̊C warmer than the pre-industrial era in the late nineteenth century. The report also notes a decline in Arctic sea ice, precipitation irregularities, and “unprecedented bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.”

“Virtually every scientific forecast says that without swift action in the next few years to cut carbon emissions, this crisis will grow to be catastrophic,” writes Bill McKibben, a leading climate change scientist and founder of 350.org. It is estimated that by 2030, 700 thousand people will be killed each year due to the damages of climate change. Storms and droughts will increase in severity, coastal flooding could displace more than 400 million people, and water sources will become increasingly precarious. In the coming years, tens of millions of Bangladeshis will have to flee from their homes due to rising sea levels and more extreme weather. In south Asia, the melting of Himalayan glaciers threatens the entire water supply, while at least 75 million people in India already lack access to clean drinking water. In Florida alone, it is likely that six million people will be displaced because of rising sea levels.

To world-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky, Trump is “[marching us] towards [the] destruction of the species” by his crass disregard for the present environmental crisis. He states that “it is hard to find words to capture the fact that humans are facing the most important question in their history – whether organized human life will survive in anything like the form we know – and are answering it by accelerating the race to disaster.”

Trump’s response to the overwhelming evidence that climate change is both real and caused by humans, is to increase carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. Trump intends to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, lift Obama’s temporary block on the Dakota Access pipeline, dismantle environmental regulations, withdraw from the Paris Climate accord, and appoint climate change deniers to leading government agencies.

Myron Ebell, who denies the science of climate change, was appointed by Trump to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Ebell is a member of the fossil fuel-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank tied to tobacco disinformation campaigns and climate change denial. Ebell has no scientific qualifications, and according to NASA Earth scientist Gavin Schmidt, “he doesn’t really know anything about science.”

Trump’s support for the Keystone XL pipeline is also troubling to manyenvironmentalists. Climate scientist James Hansen believes if the pipeline is approved, it’ll be “game over for the climate.” President Obama vetoed the pipeline in 2015 because it would undercut his administration’s “global leadership in taking serious action to fight climate change.”

On the international stage, Trump plans to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. The agreement between 197 nations seeks to limit global warming to 2 ̊C and commits the United States to reducing emissions by 32 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030. However, some believe that even Paris Agreement doesn’t go far enough. Canadian activist and journalist Naomi Klein writes that the agreement is “woefully inadequate” because of the generous amount of emissions the agreement allows.

Currently, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere at a rate of 30 billion tonnes per year. To keep warming below 2 ̊C, only one trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide can be allowed to enter the atmosphere. Remaining within this limit means a 33 per cent cut in emissions within 20 years, and zero emissions by 2050. There aren’t another four years to waste.

Image courtesy of Sabine Osmann-Deyman