Donald Trump declared that if elected
President, he would wage an all-out war against national and global climate
action. On Friday, he went so far as to deny the reality of California’s
devastating drought.
Trump said he would kill the EPA’s Clean
Power Plan and all domestic climate-related regulations. And he said, “We’re
going to cancel the Paris climate agreement” — truly humanity’s best if not
only chance to avoid catastrophic irreversible climate change lasting 1000
years.
If President Trump does what he says he
will, then America and the world will be doomed to decades, or more likely, centuries,
of strife and conflict from catastrophic climate change from the synergistic
effect of soaring temperatures, Dust-Bowlification, extreme weather, sea level
rise and super-charged storm surges. These climate impacts will create the kind
of food insecurity that drives war, conflict, and the competition for arable
and habitable land.
Ignorance is
not a virtue in the commander-in-chief of the most powerful nation on the
planet. The military recognizes the danger inherent in man-made climate change.
Man-made climate change appears to be even
more dangerous: It is happening much faster than cyclical changes in the past,
and the tectonic shifts are happening in unprecedented combinations. Global
warming is melting the Arctic, raising sea levels, driving bugs carrying
diseases like Zika, malaria, and dengue fever into virgin environments, and
making dry places drier and wet places wetter — all at once. The Pentagon now
defines climate change as a “present security threat, not strictly a long-term
risk.”
A President
Trump will have many allies in Congress who will support his ignorance.
The U.S. House of Representatives, however,
has actively acted to prevent the military from considering these risks. Back
in May, the House passed an amendment sponsored by Rep. David McKinley (R-WV)
that would have forbidden the Pentagon from using any of its funding to address
the national security impacts of climate change.
For Republicans coal mining and
oil extraction Trumps the threat of global war every time.
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