“President
Donald Trump confirmed his status as climate denier in chief…, guaranteeing his
place in history as an enemy of both science and humanity. Trump’s withdrawal
of the United States from the Paris Accord on climate change will not stop the
rest of the world from continuing to advance toward a clean-energy future.
Solar, wind, batteries, and other technologies are growing tremendously fast,
rewarding investors and employing far more people than the heat-trapping fuels
of the past. Three million Americans now work in the clean-energy sector, more
than the oil, gas, and coal industries combined…
“But
no one should pretend that it does not matter when the world’s biggest economy
rejects an agreement that put unprecedented international support behind
ambitious climate action. By removing rules and regulations that require
polluters in the United States to change their ways, Trump’s repudiation of the
Paris Accord will slow progress at the very time when humanity’s survival
requires faster action than ever.
“‘Crimes
against humanity’ is a phrase to use with caution, but it fits Trump’s
repudiation of the Paris Accord and indeed his entire climate policy. Timothy
Wirth, who as the under-secretary of state in the Bill Clinton administration
negotiated the Kyoto Protocol that sought to limit global warming, has said
that those who deny the well-established science of climate change ‘ought to be
tried for crimes against humanity.’
“Wirth
told The Nation
after Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord that he stood by his remark,
adding that the president’s action was ‘a stunning moral abdication of responsibility
to future generations.’ To refuse to act against global warming is to condemn
thousands of people to death and suffering today and millions more tomorrow.
This is murder, even if Trump’s willful ignorance of climate science prevents
him from seeing it. History will not be so blind…
“At
this point in the climate crisis, the science is terrifyingly clear. Global
emissions of heat-trapping gases must peak by 2020 if the 1.5C target is to
remain feasible, by 2030 for the 2C target. Physics does not compromise; it
does not do the deals so beloved by Trump. And that means that pledging to
unleash America’s ‘abundant domestic energy’ sources—by which Trump explained
he meant oil, gas, and coal—will make it immensely more difficult to honor
those temperature targets, even if the rest of the world continues galloping
forward.
“In
human terms, this increase in US energy production will mean more of the killer
cyclones that killed hundreds and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless
in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka this week. It will mean more of the massive storms
such as Hurricane Sandy that leveled vast parts of New York and New Jersey days
before the 2012 presidential election and inspired Businessweek’s cover headline, ‘It’s
Global Warming, Stupid!’ It will mean that the extinction crisis that has
already claimed countless plant and animal species will intensify, furthering
impoverishing the planet both ecologically and spiritually. All of this is a
crime against humanity—and against Earth.”
from Donald Trump’s Withdrawal from the Paris Accords Is a Crime Against Humanity by Mark Hertsgaard
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