Updated: 21/11/2024
The UN, the EU, the US Armed Forces and all the world’s major scientific bodies all agree that the climate emergency is the greatest threat facing humanity.
Meanwhile over 7 million people across the globe are dying every year from the air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels.
Yet Trump, with (as usual) zero factual evidence, believes that climate change is a “hoax” invented by China – who by the way have announced a $360 billion investment in clean renewable energy.
In a chilling statement on Monday, President Trump’s top environmental transition adviser Myron Ebell declared that the environmental movement is “the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world.”
- So it is not authoritarian Russia;
- it is not communist China;
- it is not Islamic fundamentalist extremism;
- it is not the western corporate takeover of media and democracy;
- it is not global tax-evasion by the wealthiest 1%;
- and it is not the concentration of over half the world’s wealth in the hands of just eight men.
According to Trump’s adviser, all of these are nothing when compared to the threat to freedom posed by … envirionmental NGOs.
According to him, they are our greatest “threat” by working peacefully with civic society and democratic processes to protect people from being poisoned by lead from coal burning, mercury from oil burning, particulates from diesel burning or to protect the what remains of the natural world, with over 60% of it already shamelessly destroyed in just my lifetime.
This is dangerous perverted logic.
But why do I say chilling?
I say it because the oiligarchy of Exxon Mobil and the Koch brothers for whom Trump’s adviser is the spokesperson for, now control almost all the levers of power in the US, from the Presidency to Congress to Murdoch’s Fox News and most terrifyingly to the US National Security Council, the State Department and the intelligence services.
If Trump’s fascist propaganda succeeds in making environmental NGOs and peaceful campaigners the public’s top ‘enemy of freedom’, then all the huge resources of the US security services could rain down on them, a tiny taste of which we have seen at the North Dakota Pipeline Protection Camp.
So what aggressive war actions has Trump already taken?
- Declared he would renege on the USA’s responsibilities to the global Paris Climate Treaty, humanity’s best last hope of averting the worst of the climate disaster.
- Appointed the head of Exxon Mobil to head up US State Department, meaning that the oil industry now leads US global foreign policy, giving it the opportunity to trash climate action not only in Trump’s USA but across the globe.
- Appointed a far-right extremist climate science denier to head up the destruction of the Environmental Protection Agency, and already issued a gagging order on all government employed climate scientists and banned any replacements for retiring scientists.
- Announced he will slash energy efficiency standards for fossil fuel car manufacturers.
- Removed all climate change references from the White House website.
- Said he will support a resurgence in the criminally lethal coal industry, the single largest source of fossil fuel pollution and climate destroying carbon.
- Pledged to renege on all US treaty commitments to fund climate change protection and adaptation funding for developing countries via the UN.
The list goes on …
Make no mistake!
- After the hottest year (again),
- after the hottest decade (again),
- with ice-caps melting before our eyes,
- with the permafrost heating up,
- with wildfires blazing across the world
- and with scientists stating that without truly urgent action, the planet faces temperature rises of up to 6C, which as they say is “incompatible with life as we know it”,
Trump has not just declared war on Muslims, but on humanity itself and the precious fragile remaining damaged ecosystems on which future generations depend.
Do what can we do? Today I would suggest six things to get started with:
- Commit yourself to living as low a carbon lifestyle as you can practically achieve.
- Email your MP urgently today, urging them to vote for an amendment today that would grant the British people the final say on Brexit Deal. The UK must stand united with the liberal democracies of Europe, against the Brexit / Trump climate destruction agenda. Really easy to do from this link.
- Join the Advertising Action on Climate Projects campaigns to stop the climate action blocking media billoinaires climate denialism propaganda.
- Support in whatever way you can, the peaceful climate activists and protests which are on the frontlines now, on the Keystone XL Pipeline, North Dakota Pipeline, Preston Road Fracking Protest (and others around UK), Risingup Heathrow Protests, Stop Killing Cyclists HM Treasury Protest on February 11th, etc etc …
- Sign the huge petition calling for refusal of State Visit to war-mongering President Trump.
- What ever other actions, you personally are moved to undertake.
This is the greatest war threat that humanity has faced. But together, we can take on Trump and the oiligarchies in Russia, US and across the globe and win.
The clean renewable energy industry that we created is now nearly a trillion dollar global industry, slashing costs year after year and now employing more people than the dinosaur fossil fuel criminals, even in the USA.
Yes we can!
Donnachadh McCarthy is an environmental campaigner and author.
Also by Donnachadh on The Ecologist.
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