A day after the United Nations issued its most urgent call to arms yet for the world to confront the threat of climate change, President Trump left Florida — a state that lies directly in the path of this coming calamity — and said nothing about it.
It was the latest, most vivid example of Trump’s dissent from an effort that has galvanized much of the world.
While the United Nations warned of mass wildfires, food shortages and dying coral reefs as soon as 2040, Trump discussed his successful Supreme Court battle rather than how rising seawaters are already flooding Miami on sunny days.
Trump’s isolation is not just from the world: In California, New York, Massachusetts and other states, governments and companies are pushing ahead with regulations and technological innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
That bottom-up activism is a source of hope for those who have watched in despair since last year when Trump declared he would pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord. But experts say it is no substitute for the world’s largest economy, and second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, turning its back on the fight.
“You have this enormous discrepancy between the White House and, essentially, everyone else,” said Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “The leadership in Washington is really moving against the whole agenda.”
The United Nations report paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”
It describes a world of worsening food shortages and poverty; more wildfires; and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.
Trump’s feelings about climate change go against most every climate scientist on earth. Instead, he calls it a hoax manufactured by China.
