Climate change. Global warming.
It's fake news, right? It must be a Chinese hoax.
No, according to the Trump regime, it's not only real; we're already fucked.
Trump's recent decision to roll back Obama-era fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks is being challenged in court and the Trump regime is not disputing that rolling back the regulations will increase emissions. They're justifying the change by arguing that it doesn't matter because catastrophic climate change is already locked in.
From the Washington Post:
Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous 7 degrees by the end of this century.
A rise of 7 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 4 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels would be catastrophic, according to scientists. Many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater without costly coastal defenses. Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe.
But the administration did not offer this dire forecast as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.
The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Trump’s decision to freeze federal fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket.
So, obviously, this raises questions about why the GOP denies that climate change is real in public while admitting it's real in private, but it also tells us something else.
It tells us the federal government -- even the Trump regime -- is in possession of information that says we're on a destructive path toward losing entire cities. It's in their own reports.
This will be a daily issue in our lives long after Trump and the current iteration of the Republican party is gone. Your children and grandchildren will pay for this.