Get Ready for Trump’s Climate-Denial Offensive

Get Ready for Trump’s Climate-Denial Offensive

Get Ready for Trump’s Climate-Denial Offensive

If Trump continues his assault on common sense about climate change, America is going to lose—and lose big.

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Lost in the din of Donald Trump’s Twitter rampages was the report last week that the White House is “fiercely divided” over Trump’s campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris climate accord. The news came as the president is planning to launch his climate-denial offensive, including an executive order to begin repealing former President Barack Obama’s climate plan, gutting the budgets of various agencies engaged in climate work such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and potentially withdrawing from the Paris accord.

The White House divide is said to pit Trump’s Rasputin, chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, against his daughter Ivanka Trump and hapless Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Yes, in the carnival mirror that is the Trump White House, the climate’s best defender is the former chief executive of ExxonMobil, an anomaly akin to Hannibal Lecter espousing vegetarianism.

Tillerson argued in his confirmation hearings that “it’s important that the United States maintains its seat at the table about how to address the threat of climate change, which does require a global response.” For the United States to abandon its commitments under the Paris accord embraced by virtually every country in the world would devastate Tillerson’s credibility. As the respected career diplomat Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state in the George W. Bush administration, put it: “In international politics, trust, reliability and keeping your commitments—that’s a big part of how other countries view our country. I can’t think of an issue, except perhaps NATO, where if the U.S. simply walks away, it would have such a major negative impact on how we are seen.”

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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