Trump and his administration believe in Global Warming. They also believe nothing should be done about it.

Donald Trump

Sea levels are rising because of Global Warming. Trump recognizes this and wants to erect a sea wall to protect his golf course in Ireland [politico.com].

The Trump Administration

DOD

In Jan 2019, the US Department of Defense (DOD) put out a report titled “Report on Effects of a Changing Climate” [PDF, defense.gov]. It reviewed the impact of Global Warming on 79 military bases.

The report starts unambiguously: “the effects of a changing climate are a national security issue”.

It concludes equally unambiguously: “About two-thirds of the 79 installations addressed in this report are vulnerable to current or future recurrent flooding and more than one-half are vulnerable to current or future drought. About one-half are vulnerable to wildfires.”

The “future”, the report’s authors clarify, “means only 20 years in the future”.

NHTSA

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), part of the US Department of Transportation (DOT), published a “Draft Environmental Impact Statement” in July 2018 [PDF, nhtsa.dot.gov]. Incidentally, Noam Chomsky calls this document “a contender for the most evil document in history” [scientificamerican.com]. For a Chomsky-independent discussion of the document, see the Sep 2018 article in the Washington Post by Juliet Eilperin, et al., titled “Trump administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100” [washingtonpost.com].

The document accepts the truth of Global Warming but rather shockingly concludes that nothing should be done. The relevant excerpt from the document (discussed at length in the WaPo article linked above):

The emissions reductions necessary to keep global emissions within this carbon budget [of 515 gigatonnes] could not be achieved solely with drastic reductions in emissions from the U.S. passenger car and light truck vehicle fleet but would also require drastic reductions in all U.S. sectors and from the rest of the developed and developing world. [pg 191]

Chomsky accurately says the report “call[s] for cancelling new automotive emissions standards. They have a sound argument. The study projects that by the end of the century temperatures will have risen 4 degrees Centigrade. Auto emissions don’t add that much, and since the game is pretty much over, why not have fun while we can” [jacobin.org]. The report itself notes that “approximately 20 percent of total U.S. CO₂ emissions are from passenger cars and light trucks” [nhtsa.dot.gov, page 35].

NHTSA’s authors, in short, advocate giving up all hope with regard to stopping Global Warming because, they seem to say, the rest of the world won’t do anything to stop emissions either. This is in sharp contrast to China’s response to Global Warming which we discuss in the concluding section.

NOAA

This July, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a report titled “2019 State of U.S. High Tide Flooding (HTF) with a 2020 Outlook” [noaa.gov]. Its thesis? “U.S. annual HTF frequency now is more than twice that in the year 2000 due to rising relative sea levels.” The New York Times, correctly points out that “the report was silent on the cause of rising seas, containing no mention of climate change or global warming” [nytimes.com].

The NOAA has been polite enough not to mention Global Warming because the “NOAA, like other government scientific agencies, has been subject to political pressure” from the Trump Administration. However, they soon won’t feel much pressure. This is because the Trump Administration has appointed David Legates, a geologist from the University of Delaware, “for a senior position” as “deputy assistant secretary of Commerce for observation and prediction”. Legates, “has a long history of questioning fundamental climate science and has suggested that an outcome of burning fossil fuels would be a more habitable planet for humans” [sciencemag.org].

Trump Administration’s Actions

While the Trump Administration does accept the truth of Global Warming, their conclusions, as we’ve seen above, are to hasten our doom. The NYT has done an amazing job listing the administration’s actions in “The Trump Administration Is Reversing 100 Environmental Rules” [nytimes.com].

Prisoner’s dilemma

NHTSA’s “rational” approach follows entirely from the Prisoner’s dilemma [investopedia.com]. They conclude that each country will act in its “selfish” interests and collude with its short term economic interests over human survival. Since, in rational economic theory, one is ill advised to look beyond one’s nose, the NHTSA decided to doom humanity for over approaches that are “not currently technologically feasible or economically practicable”.

It’s tragic that India is in the same boat as the NHTSA. This June, during the pandemic, Modi’s India, opened up 41 coal plants for commercial mining. According to his plan, the “government has set a target to gasify [ie generate natural gas from coal] around 100 million tonnes of coal by 2030” [thehindu.com].

There is one notable exception: China.

China is a stark contrast from the Trump administration. On September 22nd, addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jingping pledged that China “aim[s] to have CO₂ emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060”. The Science magazine article reporting this said this gives us a 60% chance of staying within the Paris Agreement’s target of 2°C temperature rise [sciencemag.org].

How we push our governments to do the right thing is up to us.

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