Somebody called Hugo Rifkind is complaining about the Trump victory:
Ask yourself why Donald Trump says climate change is a hoax. Yes, a hoax. Not for him the careful equivocation of the “sceptic” who, perhaps, believes that the Earth is warming but doubts that it is mankind’s doing. Or doubts that a warmer planet would necessarily be bad. Or doubts that mankind could fix this problem even if it was warming. Or that the vast economic costs of fixing it are remotely worthwhile. None of that. Long ago he said that this hoax was created by the Chinese “to make US manufacturing non-competitive”. More recently he said this had been a joke. More recently still he said it again, apparently while not joking.
So, why? Has he pored over the peer-reviewed science in five successive assessment reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and found them unconvincing? Pouting and frowning at his big gold desk, highlighter pen in tiny hand? Or has he consulted scientists himself, so keen was he to learn? Or, and I’m going out on a limb here, has he arrived at this view on a hunch and a whim, because it puts him in agreement with people with whom he wishes to agree, and in opposition to the people with whom he wishes not to? Look, I know it’s tricky. Take your time.
Still missing the obvious after all these years. What about those of us who simply do not care if the planet is warming up, or cooling down, or going side-ways; we simply do not want to pay more tax. Or incur higher utility bills.
It has always struck me that this is the ultimate cause of so-called climate scepticism. Except few people want to say so. Lord Stern famously argued that if we don’t care about future generations, we won’t care about climate change. If we stop and think about how we treat other people living and breathing today, why imagine that we care about people who are yet to be born? Now this is a positive statement, not a normative statement. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t care about future generations, I’m suggesting that we don’t care about future generations.
But I digress …
Mr Trump has sworn to rip up most of Barack Obama’s environmental policies, and probably even meant it. In his transition team, such things are the remit of Myron Ebell, a climate sceptic so hawkish that he makes Lord Lawson of Blaby look like Swampy.
Mr Trump lacks the power to cancel last year’s Paris agreement, under which most of the world agreed to limit their emissions, but he can certainly ignore it, and surely will. Where President Obama’s policies nodded towards phasing out carbon-blurting heavy industry, President Trump’s will nod towards firing it up again. He wants America to frack and drill and mine. He is also expected to sacrifice Nasa’s research into climate change in favour of going to the Moon, or perhaps Mars, though, sadly, not personally.
I have not yet heard many prominent climate sceptics crow about the pending turnaround on climate policy by the world’s largest and most influential economy. Perhaps they’re simply embarrassed because it is so glaringly based on opportunism and demagoguery rather than any sort of credible rejection of the science that they keep insisting has not been settled. Still, I’m sure an element of Trumpish revisionism will kick in before long. Environmentalists are reeling. Last week, the 22nd UN climate change conference concluded in Morocco, the first since the triumphs of Paris. Amid the great American meltdown, hardly anybody even noticed.
Our environmental friends over-reached. I don’t think there are too many people who want to deliberately trash the environment. But there is a happy balance to be reached between conservation and economic prosperity.