Climate alarmists have warned that a Trump reelection could mean America becoming a “failed state” as well as the possible “extinction” of the human race.
If Trump is not elected, “it won’t make me stop worrying about climate change; it will still be horribly hard to address,” says climate scientist Jane Long, of the Environmental Defense Fund. “But if he’s elected, the human race is not immune from extinction. You could make a bunch of really bad decisions and wipe out a whole lot of life.”
A string of alarmists’ apocalyptic predictions ranging from the destruction of the planet to the abolition of democracy were collected by James Temple, senior editor for energy at MIT Technology Review, and published Thursday under the title “Climate scientists are terrified of a second Trump term.”
Another climate scientist, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, wondered aloud about America’s future as a democratic state.
“Well, first of all, there’s the question of ‘Will the US become a dictatorial, totalitarian regime?’” he asked.
“There’s no climate policy angle to that story. The United States is then a failed state,” Danny Cullenward of Stanford’s law school warned, adding his voice to legions of others who see Donald Trump heralding the end of days.
If Trump wins, Mr. Temple predicts, “subsequent Supreme Court or federal court rulings could cement any number of the White House’s regulatory policies and establish precedents in environmental law that could last for decades.”
“Trump announced plans to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement during his early months as president and will be able to officially do so in early November,” Temple warns. “If he’s reelected, what may have been excused as an aberration in America politics will instead look to the rest of the world like the permanent loss of any US leadership on the issue.”
Time magazine joined in the hand-wringing with its own piece last Monday.
“Trump’s environmental agenda has consisted largely of undoing rules and regulations created under President Barack Obama, from a rollback of vehicle emissions standards to a nixing of emissions rules for power plants to the departure from the Paris Agreement, the landmark global deal aimed at combating climate change,” Time lamented.
“Trump’s relentless attacks could be wholly or partially undone by a new administration and Congress,” echoed Inside Climate News earlier this month. “But for now, Trump has accomplished his mission: a near total elimination of his predecessor’s most significant measures.”
“The US is on the brink of a calamity,” Temple concludes in his article Thursday. “It’s one short step away from self-inflicted crises from which the nation and the climate may well never recover.”