Donald Trump’s Descent into Climate Chaos
“If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable
that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and
our planet.”
Donald Trump and his three adult children were all signatories.
The letter went on to promote the United States as a model
for climate leadership and action:
“Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve
in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet.”
An Inconvenient Truth
If we didn’t know it then, we do now. Trump’s commitment to anything is inexorably tied to his own base ambitions, malignant narcissism, and infantile ego.
I can’t say what motivated Trump to align with climate action proponents, but it’s safe to say he didn’t much care about climate change one way or another.
There was something in it for him, until there
wasn’t.
His political ambitions and golf
courses splattered across the globe change all that. It didn’t take
long for his professed climate concern to morph into derision. Starting in
2012, he abandoned his firmly held belief (I jest, he has no
firmly held beliefs). That’s when he started accusing China of creating the
climate change hoax as a means of keeping America down.
He has held to his hoax-y rhetoric since then. What better
way to curry favor with his recalcitrant MAGA cult and attract Big Oil money than call global warming a hoax? An
added bonus is owning the libs, what with their calls for emissions reductions
and renewable energy. And it isn’t just the libs who Trump trolls with his
rapier wit and intellectual framing.
He chides other nations, claiming that their efforts to
secure a sustainable future, however minimal, will be their downfall.
Here's a blowup of the NY Times ad, showing the Trump family members names as co-signers:
As 2026 kicks off into high gear, the Trump administration
announced earlier this month its intention to withdraw the United States from the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), and 65 other international treaties
concerning climate, environment, renewable energy, and the promotion of
democracy and human rights.
Donald Trump thinks he can make climate change go away just
by saying so. What he, and the rest of us, will find out sooner rather than
later is that the climate doesn’t much care what he thinks.
He believes the future of energy is in “beautiful clean
coal,” claiming that renewable energy is too expensive. He has a peculiar hostility to wind energy, asserting that it causes cancer
and kills whales. His absurd rhetoric against wind energy likely stems from a
Scottish offshore wind farm near one of his golf courses. Renewable energy is
the fastest-growing,
cheapest source of new energy production.
The Trump Climate of Chaos
Chaos is Trump’s brand. We see it in foreign and domestic
policy, the blatantly unconstitutional power grab that attempts to circumvent
Congress and the courts, the campaigns of retribution, intimidation, and
violence against his perceived enemies. We see it in his ham-handed, unforced
strategic error in hobbling a thriving American industry, his senseless
war on climate action, and his push to revive the inevitable decline
of ugly,
dirty coal.
The tragedy in all this is that it serves no one. In all
things Trump, there is no regard for the impact his actions, rhetoric, and
policy have on people and the planet. He does not see beyond his petty
grievances, thirst for power, and constant pleading for attention. Even his
most die-hard MAGA-hat supporters will suffer (if they aren’t already).
His headlong quest to separate the United States from the
rest of the world on addressing global challenges, lead the way into a new
energy economy, and surrender America’s decades-long role as a global leader
could not have come at a worse time.
The lesson is that nobody is coming to save us. Certainly not Donald Trump. He
will continue to extract wealth for his personal vainglorious enrichment while
foreclosing the future for the rest of us. But only if we let him.
Thomas Schueneman https://tdsenvironmentalmedia.com is the founder and managing editor of GlobalWarmingisReal.com and the PlanetWatch Group. His work appears in Triple Pundit, Slate, Cleantechnia, Planetsave, Earth911, and several other sustainability-focused publications. Tom is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.
