Trump’s ‘jokes’ about climate change are no laughing matter

 Imagine you’re scheduled for delicate, lifesaving brain surgery, but the day before you’re rolled into pre-op the hospital administrator tells you that operating rooms don’t really need to be sterile environments, a sponge or two left in your skull will only make you smarter, and we use just 10% of our brains anyway, so your doctor might as well scoop the rest out to make room for a yogurt dispenser.

Even if you trusted your doctor, you’d immediately reschedule your surgery at another hospital because nobody should treat your body that way. So why, with the fate of the entire planet at stake, is this country considering reelecting a clear and present danger to our environment—who also happens to be a convicted felon?

Yeah, that’s a good question. Particularly in light of these scintillating bon mots from Donald Trump’s recent post-conviction Fox News interview:

Trump: When they say that the seas will rise over the next 400 years, one-eighth of an inch, you know. Which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, okay? Think of it, the seas are going to rise—who knows? But this is the big threat. I watch Biden the other night. “It’s the greatest existential”—he loves that word because it’s a big word, and he thinks he knows. He doesn’t even know what the hell the word means. He goes, it’s the greatest existential threat to our country. Global warming.

First of all, when master projectionist Trump says, “He doesn’t even know what the hell the word means,” what he’s really saying is, “I don’t know what it means, and as everyone knows, if I don’t know, it’s not worth knowing.”

But that’s neither here nor there. The bigger issue is that Trump clearly isn’t taking this existential threat seriously, and his decision to whistle past the graveyard as it massively floods, is all kinds of irresponsible.

Of course, it’s probably not necessary to debunk Trump’s latest exhaustively cited, peer-reviewed research (his peers are Marjorie Taylor Greene and Louie Gohmert, remember), but let’s do it anyway. Because—and I hope you’re sitting down for this seismic truth bomb—his projections are wrong.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration currently states that “sea level along the U.S. coastline is projected to rise, on average, 10-12 inches (0.25 - 0.30 meters) in the next 30 years (2020-2050), which will be as much as the rise measured over the last 100 years (1920-2020).” 

While Trump will no doubt be able to mitigate some of the most visible damage with his Sharpie, that only goes so far, and the NOAA further warns that “[f]ailing to curb future emissions could cause an additional 1.5-5 feet (0.5-1.5 meters) of rise for a total of 3.5-7 feet (1.1-2.1 meters) by the end of this century.” So an eighth of an inch over 400 years is just sliiiightly off.

Also, rising sea levels wouldn’t actually create more beachfront property, would they? Unless Trump is thinking of 1978’s “Superman: The Movie,” in which Lex Luthor plots to sink half of California into the ocean so inland areas become valuable beachfront (and, let’s face it, there’s at least a 50/50 chance he is thinking along these lines), he clearly has no clue what he’s saying. As anyone not huffing hairspray knows, rising sea levels would devastate coastal areas—and shrink their beaches—not enhance their property values. 

Of course, Trump has made nonsensical comments about the environment before, and an unnervingly large number of these have directly pertained to the state of his hair. Because if the choice comes down to preserving the future viability of human civilization as we know it and hiding Trump’s creative hairline from Miss Teen USA contestants, that’s no choice at all. The hair thing will always win.

For instance, in December 2015, Trump said this about regulations banning CFCs in hairspray: “You can't use hairspray because hairspray is going to affect the ozone. They want me to use the pump because the other one, which I really like better than going 'bing,' 'bing,' 'bing,' and then it comes out in big globs, right? And it's stuck in your hair, and you say, 'Oh my God, I got to take a shower again, my hair's all screwed up,' right? I want to use hairspray."

Of course, like climate change, Trump’s hair is a rolling nightmare, having been subject to a series of cascading effects leading to the disaster that is his post-’80s coif. And while Trump may want to wash all those globs of gel out of his hair with a steaming-hot Silkwood shower, Democrats have foiled those plans, too!

In July 2020, prior to enacting new rules allowing for higher-flow (i.e., water-wasting) shower heads, Trump said this at the White House: “So, shower heads. You take a shower, the water doesn’t come out. You want to wash your hands, the water doesn’t come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair—I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect. Perfect.”

Then there are Trump’s “jokes” (read: ignorant ramblings) about windmills being problematic because they murder whales, cause cancer, and knock out power to your TV when the wind’s not blowing. (The real reason he hates them is they ruin his ocean view.) And then there’s his belief that electric boats will inevitably kill you. And that the best way to prevent forest fires is to let loose an army of rakers until the big shipment of Forest Roombas arrives from Amazon.

None of this is funny, of course. Wind turbines are an important part of a renewable-energy future, and, if elected, Trump vows to kill all offshore wind projects “on Day One.” He whines constantly about President Biden’s successful green energy initiatives, so those would instantly go up in a wisp of diesel smoke as well. And he’s already withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement once, so expect a reprise of that toddler tantrum, too.

And then there’s the matter of that $1 billion bribe he solicited from the oil industry in exchange for reversing “dozens” of President Biden’s environmental rules—and nixing any new ones.

Of course, the difference between a future Biden administration and another Trump presidency isn’t just stark—it’s quantifiable. As Reuters reported last month, a new analysis from research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie estimates that green energy investments would lag and carbon emissions would spike under a second Trump regime, even as our prospects for saving the planet became increasingly more dire.

Reuters:

A victory by Donald Trump in the Nov. 5 presidential election would jeopardize a projected $1 trillion in low-carbon energy investments and carbon emissions would be 1 billion tonnes more by 2050 than under current policies, according to a new analysis by Wood Mackenzie published on Thursday.

[…]

Wood Mackenzie projects about $7.7 trillion in investment for the U.S. energy sector over 2023-2050 under current policies, which include key incentives enshrined in the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act. It would be $1 trillion less if Republicans reverse key policies bolstering low-carbon energy and infrastructure improvements.

In 2050, Wood Mackenzie projects, net US energy-related CO2 emissions will be 1 billion tonnes higher compared to what they would be under current policies.

Meanwhile, Department of Defense researchers, who’ve assessed the effects of climate change beyond their impact on one guy’s hair, are a bit less sanguine about our prospects than Trump is. In the first paragraph of its 2023 assessment on “Climate Change and Adaptation,” the DoD warns about the—what’s this goofy word now?—“existential threat of climate change.”

Then again, what can you reasonably expect from a guy who wants to Make Asbestos Great Again?

We’re at a fraught moment when it comes to climate change. The effects are visible all around us, and now is certainly not the time to roll back progress.

Trump’s “jokes” about climate change are easy enough to dismiss, but behind the jokes are a careless, thoughtless dolt whose ignorance could very well usher in the end of civilization as we know it. Count this as just one more reason we shouldn’t elect a convicted felon who regularly cuts corners to be the next leader of the free world.

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