Trump’s Team Embraces Catastrophic Climate Change
The playbook for avoiding action: Deny, deny, deny ... and then call the problem insurmountable.
The U.S. auto market alone can't solve global CO2 emissions. But that's not an excuse for inaction.
Photographer: David McNew/Getty Images
The Trump administration has adopted a surprising new line of reasoning on climate change: acknowledge the likelihood of catastrophic global warming, and use this as rationale for doing nothing about it. Instead of arguing the problem is small or nonexistent, they argue that it’s too big.
The new logic showed up in an environmental impact statement on emissions standards by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Within the 500-page document is a section on climate science, the well-understood role greenhouse gas emissions play in changing the climate, and the scientists’ predictions that without curbing those emissions, the global temperature will rise about 4 degrees Celsius or 7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. This much change in global temperatures would destroy agriculture and lead to widespread deaths from heat and famine.