The Yale (University) Program on Climate Change’s polling on climate change finds that 72 per cent of Americans say they know climate change is a present danger. About half of the population polled think global warming should be a high priority for the president and Congress.
Yet former United States President Donald Trump, who is prowling for a second helping in the White House, promises to overturn progressive legislations on environmental protection.
The Biden administration has passed many environmental protection measures aimed at cutting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, restricting toxic chemicals and conserving public lands and waters.
Biden calls global warming an existential threat. Trump considers climate change a hoax. He is a lead climate change denialist.
The Trump administration weakened or wiped out 125 environmental rules and policies over four years. The nulled rules were passed during Bill Clinton and Barack Obama presidencies.
The Biden administration has also overturned 27 Trump actions affecting the fossil fuel industry and passed 24 new rules affecting the sector, an analysis by The Washington Post published early this month shows.
Candidate Trump would defy climate science if top US oil companies contribute $1 billion (Sh133 billion) to his campaign. Top oil executives complain about burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million (Sh53.2 billion), last year alone, to lobby the Biden administration.
The Washington Post reported Trump in early May sold transactional democracy to fossil fuel dealers during a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. “You are all wealthy enough," he said, "you should raise $1 billion (Sh133 billion) to return me to the White House.”
The Washington Post reported Trump has committed to scrapping Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy, and other initiatives the fossil fuel industry opposes.
Trump’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ pro-fossil fuel industry cry sits fine with Big Oil than Biden’s green energy approach. The sector made a killing during Trump’s presidency. He is promising them boom if they write him a fat cheque.
Trump’s pleas for a $1 billion campaign funding is yet to be delivered, but the raunchy former president’s message is clear: “You give me the money; I’ll do what you want me to do,” The Washington Post reported about the Mar-a-Lago rendezvous.
Trump is honestly dishonest. US MSNBC Program Alex Wagner Tonight shows what Trump’s proposition to Big Oil means for democracy and the planet: “It’s basic pay-to-play corruption…If you are destroying the environment with fossil fuels, just give me a billion dollars and I’ll make those [Biden] regulations go away.”
Trump says it raw: He is going to destroy the planet if top oil executives will write him a fat cheque. Cynics consider Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign an ominous sign of a possible return of the destroyer of the planet.
A 2019 study by the British charity Oxfam shows climate-related disasters have tripled in 30 years with horrendous consequences, especially for vulnerable communities. It reports that 14 million people, on average, were dispossessed annually between 2008 and 2016. Oxfam petitioned governments to address the politics and power at the core of the increasing effects of the climate crisis.
The Club of Rome, founded in 1968, raised the alarm on climate change in 1972. The limits of growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind notes:
“If the present growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits of growth on this planet will be reached within the next 100 years. The most probable result will be a sudden and uncontrollable decline in population and industrial capacity.”
The 2015 papal letter Laudatory Si advocated action on the climate crisis. The encyclical warned, “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity. Its worst impact will probably be felt by developing countries in the coming decades.”
Al Gore, a former US Democrat vice president, once warned in a Ted Talk: “The fossil fuel industry has used fraud and falsehoods on an industrial scale. And by lavishly funding their legacy networks of political and economic power, they have captured the policymaking process in too many countries.”
The US elections due in November, which put climate change on the ballot, will be a repeat of the 2020 tussle between Biden for Democrats and Trump for Republicans.
