Greens: Trump would be only climate change doubting world leader
If elected president, Republican Donald Trump would be the only world leader who rejects mainstream climate science, an environmental group’s new report says.
The Sierra Club, which supports Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, first made the observation about Trump’s climate change doubts in July.
{mosads}Since that report was published, eight nations have gotten new heads of state or government, and all of them believe that climate change is happening and that human consumption of fossil fuels is the primary cause, the Sierra Club said.
The finding underscores green groups’ longstanding contention that Trump and the Republican Party stand alone in the world in their position on global warming.
“World leaders change, but Donald Trump’s total ignorance of science remains the same. Electing a climate science conspiracy theorist such as Trump would make America a global laughingstock and embarrassment, all while relinquishing our leadership role in the world,” Khalid Pitts, the Sierra Club’s national political director, said in a statement.
“The ice caps don’t negotiate, and neither do rising seas,” he said. “Donald Trump’s moral failure to acknowledge the climate crisis might very well mean planetary disaster if he is elected.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed doubts about the scientific consensus that humans are the main cause of a warming planet. He once tweeted that global warming “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
He denied tweeting that in a September debate when Clinton raised the issue.
In the time since the Sierra Club’s July report, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Iceland, Peru, the Philippines, Uzbekistan, Lebanon and Seychelles each got new leaders.
While some of the leaders, like United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May, are politically conservative, each leader or government supports fighting climate change to some degree.
“We will continue to play our part in the international effort against climate change,” May said at a United Nations General Assembly Meeting in September.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has publicly clashed with President Obama numerous times since taking office and has promised to reduce the country’s dependence on the United States, but he still wants to fight climate change.
“Addressing climate change shall be a top priority but upon a fair and equitable equation,” Duterte said in a July address.
The Sierra Club’s complete report analyzes the climate positions of all 195 nations recognized by the State Department to reach its conclusion.