Donald John Trump keeps reminding us of how smart he is, how he knows more than the experts about anything under the sun.
He calls climate a “hoax.” He says it’s not real. He blames the Chinese for igniting the rumor about the warming temperatures around Earth.
Along comes an assessment from a panel of actual experts, commissioned by the same federal government Trump was elected to lead that says something quite different. It’s chilling, if you’ll pardon the weird metaphor.
The National Climate Assessment says the following: “With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century — more than the current Gross Domestic Produce of many U.S. states.”
I want to add with emphasis that this comes from the federal government. It’s not a hunch or a “belief” or something pulled out of (polluted) thin air. It’s an analysis done by experts who get paid good money to tell us the truth about the state of our planet.
Will the president heed it? Will his allies in Congress take heed as well? Will the president’s 38-percent “base” believe a word of it? No, no and hell no.
The report said that “Future risks from climate change depend primarily on decisions made today.” That means, to me, that human beings who have contributed to this environmental cataclysm must now take ownership of the remedies we need to forestall what many believe is the inevitable destruction of the only planet we have.
The president took office and immediately began issuing executive orders rescinding environmental rules and regs enacted by his predecessors. He called them “job killers.” The consequences of this new hands-off policy have yet to be felt, but I believe they will be felt over time.
The very idea that the president of the United States would even deny the existence of a crisis that damn near every credible scientist on Earth says is happening is mind-boggling in the extreme. But this one does.
I am acutely aware that a report such as this might be tough to swallow given the bitter cold that has swept across the country. I simply urge us all to look at the bigger, global picture and assess the evidence that our average annual temperature worldwide is increasing; that increase is having a demonstrable impact on our fragile world.
Donald Trump doesn’t get it.
Yep, this guy scares the bejabbers out of me.