WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER

President Loudest Climate Denier

The definition of ignorance is “a lack of knowledge, education, or awareness.” Climate change deniers can’t hide behind a lack of knowledge, so they claim the knowledge is false and the facts are fake.
They could also claim the earth is flat, yet a satellite would still persist in orbiting it. Facts seem to work that way.

The most important issue humanity faces is already changing the futures of all living things. The destruction of our entire planetary environment through accelerating climate change is a well-known fact that cannot be intelligently denied or ignored.

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Denial is among the worst decision any human being could ever make. Pulling a trigger and murdering someone is a horrific decision, but pulling a trigger on all of the living world is immeasurably worse.
Pulling the trigger is exactly what climate deniers are doing, and they are led by the loudest and most ignorant denier of all – President Trump.

Thousands of scientists and climate experts agree we have a crisis, and that failing to address the crisis spells disaster. The overwhelming consensus is rejected by Trump, and many
others, whose understanding of science is third-grade level at best, or, perhaps more importantly, whose
wealth is dependent on denying the facts.

It can be understood why the fossil-fuel industries won’t face the facts. The only way to fight climate change is through reducing CO2 – along with other gases such as methane – that are released into the atmosphere during extracting, refining, transporting, and burning fossil fuels. To cut these emissions threatens the livelihoods of 900,000 U.S. citizens employed in the industry.

Yet the October 2019 New Scientist magazine had an article citing studies showing 9.5 million jobs, or 4 percent of the working age population, are in the green economy, which is defined as covering everything from renewable energy to environmental consultancy.

Ten times as many people at work in the green economy as opposed to roughly one million in fossil fuel is not a fact Trump will tweet. Or acknowledge. He is resolutely engaged in taking our nation back to a mythically greater time while also cluelessly edging the world closer to the abyss.

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Trump’s lack of knowledge is not news to anyone. What he falsely claims to know while exhibiting a
total lack of knowledge is legion. (Wind power causing cancer and gas emissions, anyone?) In fact, the louder and more frequently he says something is true, the more certain you can be it isn’t.
The puzzling thing is why presumably intelligent people support his denier beliefs: US senators and
congressmen, governors and other state officers, business people, down to everyday citizens.

It’s simple to assume politicians are trying to avoid being ridiculed by Trump or avoiding primaries from the hard right. But that overlooks the economic incentives, such as fossil fuel industry donations to politicians and grants to state and local governments, all designed to influence legislation.

On the national level one answer is found in the almost $½ billion donated by the combined fossil fuel industries to Congressional Republicans since 2016. That buys vast amounts of influence – or perhaps more accurately, votes.

While money rolls into Republican coffers, the ice caps melt, oceans rise, temperatures rise, extreme climate events grow, and life in the seas, on land, and in the air dies off. It is outrageous that our elected representatives sell out our entire world with lies and falsehoods adds insult to injury.

Finally, I don’t understand how Republican deniers imagine they can escape climate change. Their first world lives and money will buy little respite from bigger storms and enormous wildfires, from repeated rising oceans and coastal flooding, from growing food supply issues, or other problems.

It seems their votes have been corporatized in the worst possible way – to focus on immediate returns and not think about tomorrow.