Climate change: is Trump “accelerating the race to disaster”?

Donald Trump’s denial of climate change has created shockwaves of fear and concern throughout international environmental groups.

Some of the changes that Trump hopes to implement once in the White House include the scrapping of the US’s involvement of the Paris Agreement on climate change, an agreement that Obama referred to as “the moment that we finally decided to save our planet”.

Renowned philosopher and linguist, Noam Chomsky, recently spoke out about the Republican party, calling them “the most dangerous organisation in world history” due to their climate change policies.

Professor Chomsky referred to a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which said the 17 hottest years recorded have been in this century and reported rising sea levels and other effects of climate change.

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“The party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organised human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand,” Professor Chomsky said.

“It is hard to find words to capture the fact that humans are facing the most important question in their history — whether organised human life will survive in anything like the form we know — and are answering it by accelerating the race to disaster.”

“The winning candidate, now the President-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible.”

Trump will not have an easy time with his new policies and will face plenty of backlash, particularly from billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, who has spent over $140 million on fighting climate change.

Steyer said on Tuesday that he will spend whatever it takes to fight Donald Trump’s pro-drilling and anti-regulation agenda.

“Every single one of these things, whether it was getting rid of Paris or cutting back the EPA, we think are extremely dangerous to the security of every American,” said Steyer. “We think it is based on willful ignorance of the facts and flies in the face of the realities facing the world.”