Donald Trump’s War on Climate Science Begins

Donald Trump was sworn into office on Jan. 20 as the 45th president of the United States and he marked his first day in office by purging any and all references to climate change from the official White House website.

Within minutes of the inauguration ceremony, the White House website received a swift makeover: the climate change page was removed along with all mentions of global warming and climate change anywhere on the website.

Instead, a page called “America First Energy Plan” was put up, in which Trump promises to drill more oil and empower coal companies, most of which are located in regions whose votes helped send the real-estate mogul and former reality TV star to Washington, D.C.

Repeating his campaign pledges, Trump emphasizes on the website that he is “committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan”.

Going against the most irrefutable scientific evidence of the climatic havoc caused by mankind, Trump will get rid of the Climate Action Plan at his own peril. Unfortunately, its consequences will not be restricted to the US, and the world will have to bear the brunt of worsening global warming.

  Dangerous Delusion

While the WH website changeover is not surprising, it serves as a sobering reminder for environmental activists that Trump is serious about increasing America’s oil and gas output, although whether he can actually do that is up for debate. 

Aside from oil and gas production reaching near-record highs in the administration of ex-president, Barack Obama, remarkably low prices of oil and gas will make it exponentially difficult for Trump to improve on Obama’s numbers.

However, that’s hardly good news; the problem is that he’s not going to reduce output, as it is supposed to happen under the landmark Paris Climate Change Agreement.

The accord, which was signed in December 2015 in the French capital, binds nearly 200 nations to a pledge to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to near-zero by the end of the century and cap the planet’s warming at under 2°C; a herculean task even if every nation delivers on its pledge.

During his campaign, Trump repeatedly railed against Obama’s climate policies and assured his supporters—including steel producers and coal giants—that he would pull out of the agreement.

Trump’s skepticism of climate change stems from his irrational belief that it is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to “make US manufacturing non-competitive”.

The new administration’s non-compliance with the Paris Agreement will impact every corner of the world, for the simple fact that the US is the world’s second-highest emitter of carbon dioxide, right behind China.

Furthermore, developing countries and island nations, who risk being completely drowned by rising sea levels if the global climate pact fails, are looking to the US to contribute to efforts to raise $100 billion a year by 2020. The money will be used to help poorer nations mitigate the effects of climate change.

Should the US pull out of the agreement, or if Trump decides to put his much-touted business skills to use to renegotiate the accord, it will not just be Americans that will suffer the consequences but every single nation.

While it may be too soon to judge what kind of a president Trump will be, early signs show he will be anything but an environmentally-conscious one.