Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.
The Trump administration is admitting that a catastrophic rise in planetary temperatures will endanger millions of lives around the world — but is still refusing to do anything to prevent it.
In an environmental impact statement released by the administration, the Trump team acknowledged that by the end of the century the planet will warm by seven degrees Fahrenheit, or about 3.5 degrees Celsius.
Such an increase in temperature would be nothing short of a worldwide disaster.
“Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe,” The Washington Post reports. Major American cities like Manhattan and Miami would be underwater. Coral reefs would simply dissolve as the ocean becomes more acidic.
The Trump administration knows that all of this will happen — and yet it is choosing to make the problem even worse.
The impact statement notes that to fight the problem, cuts have to be made in carbon emissions. But it makes the absurd claim that moving away from the use of carbon-emitting fossil fuels “is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible.”
In fact, the statement was only issued in the first place to justify the administration’s decision to freeze changes to fuel emission standards put in place by the Obama administration. That decision will lead to more emissions and faster, more dangerous temperature increases.
Trump has also pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, an international pact designed to slow the predicted temperature rise.
“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” Michael MacCracken, senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002, told the Post.
David Pettit, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the paper he was “shocked” at the administration’s admission.
“With this administration, it’s almost as if this science is happening in another galaxy,” Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the Post.
Trump himself has absurdly claimed that climate change is not real, but rather a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government.
The Trump administration, on the other hand, knows that climate change is very real indeed.
But no matter how much death and destruction will result, Trump officials still refuse to lift a finger to stop it.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
