A report released Tuesday shows that, if elected, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump would be the only national leader to deny the science of climate change.
The Sierra Club tallied statements from every single country leader from all 195 countries officially recognized by the U.S. State Department. All of these leaders have made public statements, and, in many cases, have taken concrete actions, addressing the problem of unlimited greenhouse gas emissions. This includes, the report notes, representatives of U.S. allies such as Canada and Mexico, as well as from trading partners and leading emitters such as China and India.
Trump, on the other hand, has called climate change a “hoax,” a “con job,” and “nonexistent.”
Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee – I'm in Los Angeles and it's freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2013
Trump’s go-it-alone position on climate would be bad for American foreign policy, according to the Sierra Club’s global climate policy director, John Coequyt.
“At almost every head of state meeting that the president has had over the last several years… one of the points of common understanding, one of the more positive points of discussion, even among countries where we have lots of issues that are difficult to resolve, has been climate change,” Coequyt told ThinkProgress.
“If you take that off the table… then it’s harder to get all of those other things done. I think that is probably the single thing about Donald Trump that is really the hardest for me to understand: He seems to believe that he can have an antagonistic relationship with every country from the beginning,” Coequyt said. “That would be very difficult for him as a president and bad for our national security.”
He seems to believe that he can have an antagonistic relationship with every country from the beginning
Of course, while all these countries signed the Paris Agreement, the commitment to action varies.
Australia, notably, has been walking back its commitments to addressing climate. Under the current conservative government, Australia became the first country in the world to repeal a carbon tax. Britain, too, has a conservative government that is pushing fracking and has slowed solar investments. But while those countries might not be doing as much as they could to address climate change, the Republican party in the United States remains alone in actually denying that climate change is occurring — and is caused by human action.
http://archive.thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/26/3782434/trump-let-the-world-burn/ It’s unclear exactly how believable Trump’s climate denial is. While he has said a lot of crazy things about climate change, as a business person, he has applied for a permit to build a wall protecting a golf course from sea level rise and signed a 2008 letter supporting U.S. leadership at COP20 in Copenhagen.
But, Coequyt said, the most important thing is to look at what he is doing, and saying, now. As a campaigner, Trump has proposed reneging on the United States’ commitments under the Paris Agreement and doing away with the Environmental Protection Agency. Under his proposed energy plan, regulations on greenhouse gas emissions would be eliminated and the Keystone XL pipeline would be approved. Trump has told coal country that he will bring back their industry.
“Much of what Donald Trump is currently promising with respect to the fossil fuel industry is just wishful thinking. He is not going to be able to bring the coal industry back,” Coequyt said. “He’s telling people what they want to hear. I don’t believe that he believes that he can deliver.”
The coal industry has been in decline for decades, and is now under even more pressure from the rise in renewable energy sources and low-cost natural gas. Despite the rhetoric about a War on Coal, the president has very little to do with the industry’s decline, Coequyt said.
“The progress that is being made in the U.S. right now is being driven to a large degree by market forces, local advocacy, and a big shift in corporation’s approach to energy issues,” he said. “Everyone recognizes the threat. Everyone recognizes the danger.
Everyone recognizes the threat. Everyone recognizes the danger
So while some voters might respond to this rhetoric, overall Trump’s position on climate could be bad news for the candidate come November.
In swing states, most voters not only accept the science of climate change, they believe we should do something about it. Even among Republican voters, climate change denial is hardly as rampant as Congress and oil-industry funded propaganda might lead someone to believe.
A Yale University study from January 2015 found that 44 percent of registered Republican voters think that climate change is real and caused by humans. In fact, only self-identifying conservative and tea party Republicans are more likely than not to reject the scientific literature on climate change. Among liberal Republicans, 68 percent accept the science, and among moderate Republicans, 62 percent.