I was in a room with a thousand people in Sydney, Australia, at the same moment Donald Trump gave his acceptance speech, listening to Maria Tiimon Chi-Fang, a major activist from the island state of Kiribati. I’d been sending e-mails with the subject line “It’s the end of the world” all day. I was abruptly embarrassed by the privilege of this exaggeration.
We must all prepare to be warriors.
If Trump follows through on his threats and reverses the (insufficient) climate progress made under Obama, inciting other countries to do the same, Chi-people Fang’s and culture would very certainly vanish beneath the waters. It was literally the end of their world.
Chi-Fang described the Paris climate talks as a unique moment of hope. It’s not a flawless document, but island nations fought a courageous campaign to add wording that reflects the need to limit global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. “We didn’t sleep,” she said to the audience.
Kiribati and other low-lying islands now have a fighting chance of survival thanks to the 1.5 degree aim. But we know that attaining that aim, or even the more generous 2 degree target, means we won’t be able to build a single new fossil-fuel infrastructure. With the fossil fuels now in production, we have already depleted our carbon budget.
In his “100-day plan to Make America Great Again,” published at the end of October, Donald Trump stated unequivocally that he intended to grab carbon as forcefully as he brags about grabbing women. Here are a few of his current plans:
The stakes are higher than ever before.
approving the Keystone XL project, easing limitations on fossil-fuel production, and rejecting “billions in contributions to United Nations climate change initiatives”
That’s right: warm the globe as soon as possible while burning the meagre life jackets presently handed to those who would suffer the most. And, just in case there was any doubt, Trump has named Myron Ebell of the climate-denying and scientist-harassing Competitive Enterprise Institute to lead the transformation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
This is only a sampling of what is at stake if Trump follows through on his promises. We will not let him. Outside of the United States, we must begin to demand economic sanctions in response to this treaty-breaking criminality. We all need to be ready to fight up in North America, where the carbon Trump wants to release is now buried—and if you want to see what it looks like, go no farther than Standing Rock.
