Trump is Losing Money and Support by Continuing to Deny Climate Change

There is no doubt that smart climate change policies will make a huge impact on both a nation and the world. But, did you know that a smart climate policy in the US could save the country tens of trillions of dollars?

A recent internal memo in the White House showed the President’s dismal stance on climate change. Faced with strong evidence indicating both the existence and level of damage caused by climate change, the memo suggested three options for dealing with these reports. The first was to debate the findings, the second to cast doubt on the conclusions and the third was simply to ignore the findings altogether. Nowhere in the memo is there an option of accepting the reports and acting upon the findings.

Yet, more and more evidence is being pushed out into the public sphere showing how global warming is going to cost more than just the environment. A paper published in Nature showed that if the global warming limit was capped at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, the financial savings would be over $20 trillion. This is compared with the original target of 2 degrees.

The flip side to this, however, is that the cost of the effort needed to reduce the global temperature by that extra half degree would cost around $300 billion more than what it would take to meet 2 degrees. Although the lower target would outweigh its costs by a factor of around 70 to 1, nothing is being done to make this a reality.

There is currently nothing coming from the Trump administration that indicates a desire to reduce carbon pollution. In fact, Trump has been doing everything in his power to undo climate change policies and give new life to the coal and oil industries despite the fact that this will particularly hurt what is known as ‘Trump country’.

Unfortunately for the American people, what Trump prizes above all else, including the lives and welfare of humans, is short-term corporate profit. This means that the sensible solution of taking aggressive action to reduce global warming is not an option and it is the economies of the southern, conservative states that are going to suffer because of this.

97% of scientists agree that humans are the cause of global warming. What’s more, that same number of people agrees that a continued climate change at the rate we are going now will have devastating effects on the world and all of the species on planet Earth. Gambling on the possibility of 3% of scientists being right is a bad idea, especially when the stakes are as high as they are. Humans naturally want to cover themselves for risk – this is why we buy insurance and eat healthily where possible. So, why is the President of the most powerful country on earth gambling with the lives of its citizens?

Not only is denying global warming bad for the world, but it is bad for the Republican party. Young conservatives are not as blinded to the truth as their predecessors and most of them want to see action being taken to remedy our environmental wrongs. The youth of today knows that they will be the ones picking up the mess of their elders in the future and that it is up to them to make sure something is done about it now rather than waiting until it is too late.