While President Donald Trump has strayed away from his previous position that climate change doesn’t exist, the president still won’t agree with the
While President Donald Trump has strayed away from his previous position that climate change doesn’t exist, the president still won’t agree with the vast majority of scientists that current global warming is a human-created phenomenon.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Trump said that he cares about the environment but won’t prioritize it over the economy.
“I am a person that believes very, very strongly in the environment. I am truly an environmentalist,” Trump said. “[…] But I also want jobs for our country.”
Earlier this month, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report detailing that the effects of climate change may not be reversible.
But the president brushed it off.
“No, no. Some [scientists] say that and some say differently,” Trump said. “I mean, you have scientists on both sides of it. My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years. Dr. John Trump. And I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject, but I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture.”
Trump is correct in saying that scientists aren’t in total agreement on climate change. However, Trump’s stance aligns with about 3 percent of scientists. According to NASA:
Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.
Trump has called climate change and global warming a hoax dozens of times but not so much since he stepped into the political spotlight:
Windmills are the greatest threat in the US to both bald and golden eagles. Media claims fictional ‘global warming’ is worse.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9,2014
Famously, Trump once theorized on Twitter that the Chinese government invented global warming:
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U. S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6,2012
The president has taken questionable action on climate policies since he entered office, most notably dropping out of the Paris climate agreement. Trump indirectly referenced the decision.
“If we would have, as an example, entered certain agreements with other countries, I actually think that we’re doing it so they could have an economic advantage,” Trump told the AP. “Because we would have had a tremendous — we would have been at a tremendous economic disadvantage if we entered into certain agreements.”
