Now Trump can make the climate great again
I tried to write about something else but the election of Donald Trump has taken up most of the vital thinking space in my head today.
The result was not a complete shock. I sat through the Brexit night here in the UK and I was up early to watch Trump’s inexorable slide towards the presidency. When the only choice offered voters is between more of the same and change, those in pain opt for change, even if change may very well lead to more pain.
It is no coincidence that the only candidate that could have stopped Trump was Sanders, who also offered change. The difference was that, with Sanders, the economics were coherent and the message one of inclusion. But the Democrats, in thrall to corporate backers, blocked Sanders. And so we were left with a race that impassioned those in pain and left others trying hard to become enthused by the status quo.
Misogyny and white supremacy have obviously played their part but, as Jonathan Cook rightly says, it was the liberal establishment that ‘unleashed the Trump monster’. I won’t rehearse Cook’s arguments here. Suffice to say, I agree with his analysis.
Cook is also right when he highlights perhaps the scariest — among many scary promised policies — aspect of a future Trump presidency; the denial of the science of climate change.
Trump has promised to disband — or something similar — the Environmental Protection Agency. This, in tandem with relaxing already generous regulations for the fossil fuel industries, guarantees that one of the world’s great polluters will be able to pick up the pace and almost single-handedly take us well beyond the point of no return.
Then again, I could be wrong: perhaps climate change really is all a Chinese conspiracy to destroy American industry.
Happy days.
