[NEWS] Trump vs Climate Change

“If you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in facts or in science or empirical truths, and therefore, in my humble opinion, should not be allowed to hold public office.” - Leonardo DiCaprio

As we approach the end of 2018 with excruciating speed of climate change, I wanted to take time to look back at President Trump's responses to the health of our planet. Turns out, as of Thanksgiving, this issue is more fruitful than I originally expected.

What happened? On black Friday, traditionally the day with the slowest flow of news due to family gatherings across the country, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released the Fourth National Climate Assessment. While confronting the allegation that the government had intentionally released the report on this day to avoid attention, President spoke to the reporters outside the White House. "I've read some of it [the report]. It's fine..I don't believe it. No, no, I don't believe it." The president is in denial. When I heard him let those words out of his mouth, I couldn't agree more with Leonardo DiCaprio, an environmental activist, who thinks people who don't believe in climate change should not hold public office.

Denying the truth of climate change is one thing. He has done this several times in several different versions before. Denying the report written by 300 expert authors through federal research program established and sponsored by the government of the United States is another thing. The comprehensive national report concludes that “the evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen, that the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country, and that climate-related threats to Americans’ physical, social, and economic well-being are rising.” Trump doesn’t seem to care, because what he just experienced on the day of Thanksgiving was brutally low temperature, which in his mind contrasts “global warming.

The tweet is unbelievably ludicrous and negligent when written by the leader of a nation-state. The global warming and climate change we are experiencing today isn't something the planet has experienced centuries ago when natural CO2 warmed the globe and thawed the ice, ending "the Ice Age". Scientists around the world have continuously proven this man-made climate change that is causing the entire globe warming on average - which does not mean that all parts of the globe will turn into Hawaii weather. It is hard to accept that the leader of the world's top country does not understand the simple truth, never mind the definitions of basic scientific terms.

Weather: atmospheric conditions that occur locally over short periods of time - from minutes to hours or days. Weather is local and short-term. (source: NASA)

Climate: the long-term regional or even global average of temperature, humidity and rainfall patterns over seasons, years, or decades. Climate is global and long-term. (source: NASA)

Global warming: an increase in the earth’s average atmospheric temperature that causes corresponding changes in climate and that may result from the greenhouse effect. (source: dictionary.com)

Climate change: a broad range of global phenomena created predominantly by burning fossil fuels, which add heat-trapping gases to Earth’s atmosphere. These phenomena include the increased temperature trends described by global warming. (source: NASA)

President Trump is transforming a scientifically proven fact to a political matter. Just like death penalty, abortion, legalizing marijuana, or immigration laws, climate change has just become one of those bipartisan topic of discussion under Trump administration. And under his ruling in the past 2 years, many policies and initiatives on climate change have retracted.

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Trump's Un-Accomplishments on Climate Change

December 2016 In the "Fox News Sunday" interview with Chris Wallace, then President-elect Donald Trump said, "nobody really knows" if climate change is real. He also mentioned that the Paris Agreement puts the United States at a competitive disadvantage with other countries.

January 2017 Moments after the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, the official White House website deleted nearly all mentions of climate change. "Nearly" because the term was mentioned with the proposal to eliminate all climate change policies passed during the Obama administration. This news stirs up activists to host the largest March of Science ever.

February 2017 The U.S. Senate confirms Rex Tillerson, the former fossil fuel CEO as secretary of state and Scott Pruitt as the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This cabinet appointments implied a down-hill to climate policies that must be pinned down. Rex Tillerson left the Trump Cabinet in March 2018 and Scott Pruitt left EPA in July 2018.

June 2017 President Trump announced that the United States is officially withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement with 195 signatories. Under the agreement, committed countries must determine, plan, manage, and report on contributions that they make to mitigate global warming, in order to prevent the global temperature from rising 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrail levels. By withdrawing from the agreement, the United States no longer makes national contributions to meet the standards.

December 2017 Obama Administration's 2015 National Security Strategy placed climate change as one of the major dangers facing the nation and the world. This allowed the United States to build consensus with other countries in dealing with global warming. The Paris Agreement was one of major achievements.Trump administration's NSS in 2017 dropped climate change from the list of global threats.

February 2018 The Trump Administration dramatically (72%, dramatically that is) cuts funding for a Department of Energy program. The program supports research in clean energy technologies in an attempt to fight climate change.

May 2018 The White House cancels NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) by cutting the budget. NASA's CMS serves to measure emission reductions in the countries, enabling governments to manage climate change crisis.

October 2018 In an interview with Lesley Stahl from CBS News, there was this conversation.

Lesley Stahl: Do you still think that climate change is a hoax?

Donald Trump: I think something's happening. Something's changing and it'll change back again. I don't think it's a hoax, I think there's probably a difference. But I don't know that it's man-made. I will say this. I don't wanna give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don't wanna lose millions and millions of jobs. I don't wanna be put at a disadvantage.

Lesley Stahl: I wish you could go to Greenland, watch these huge chunks of ice just falling into the ocean, raising the sea levels.

Donald Trump: And you don't know whether or not that would have happened with or without men. You don't know.

November 2018 While the deadly wildfire caused by painful drought in Northern California was burning thousands of homes, President blames California forest management via Twitter.

Do not be appalled by his actions. He is impacting our pursuit to save the earth from disasters, but he can only do so much when we take actions ourselves. There are state legislators who are working tirelessly to take initiatives within states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, build more LEED certified buildings, and implement eco-friendly transits, so do not be let down.