As the US elections draw near, it seems there is a real possibility Donald Trump may be elected to the White House once again. This outcome is incredible in itself (at least to observers outside the US) but equally astonishing is the lack of media coverage concerning the likely effect of a second Trump presidency on the looming climate crisis.
After all, there is a very big difference between a presidential candidate who pays at least some attention to the concerns of climate scientists and a candidate who has dismissed the phenomenon of global warming as a hoax. (More recent pronouncements by Trump do not suggest an improved understanding of the topic).
However, the very real problem of climate change has received almost no attention in media coverage of the race for the White House. Where one might have expected journalists to at least question candidates on the marked rise in extreme weather events, from devastating hurricanes in North Carolina to flash floods in Florida, such matters received almost no coverage during the election.
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Of course, this indifference to the crisis of climate change is not confined to the media, or to the United States. For example, the last round of European elections saw a clear shift away from Green Party candidates and policies throughout the continent.
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Unfortunately, this shift does not reflect any change in global warming; surface temperatures continue to rise in tandem with rising greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, most climate scientists now suggest that the Paris target of remaining within 2 degrees of the pre-industrial average is no longer realistic, a breach that will almost certainly have serious consequences for populations in many parts of the world.
How did such a disconnect occur between the predictions of scientists and the views of politicians and the public? My own view is that much of the problem stems from a post-truth media – that is, the increased tendency for media outlets to fail to distinguish between prejudiced opinion and established fact.
This rise of disinformation is often attributed to social media but I would argue that many traditional news outlets – from the tabloid press to the broadsheets – have long indulged in the same behaviour. For example, I could count on one hand the number of times I have read a reasonably accurate article on climate change in well-known outlets such as the Sunday Times, the Telegraph or the Wall Street Journal. What these outlets have in common is a strong conservative editorial outlook that consistently ignores the inconvenient findings of modern climate science.
This is precisely the reason Donald Trump is such a dangerous candidate for a second presidency. It is not his strange pronouncements, his narcissism or even his tendencies toward fascism that worry most scientists. Instead, it is his overt corruption and clear determination to put the interests of business cronies ahead of the public good at every turn.
It should not be forgotten that during the first Trump administration, key personnel in federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were replaced by political appointees with little expertise, a replacement that led to widespread dismantling of important environmental regulation. Worse, Trump’s more recent pronouncements make it clear this behaviour would become even more marked in a second term.
One might argue that the United States and indeed the world survived a Trump presidency before. However, it appears that Trump himself has become more disturbed and more dictatorial in recent years. Meanwhile the climate crisis has become ever more pressing, with surface temperatures, sea levels and polar ice-melt all rising exactly as feared.
At the very least, one could expect a second Trump administration to result in a rollback of all US legislation concerned with reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in tandem with a ramping up of new licences for the drilling of oil and gas. In addition, Trump has pledged to remove the US from all international climate accords, a removal that could trigger similar actions among other big nations.
All in all, it seems obvious that a second Trump presidency could be extremely detrimental to efforts to combat climate change. Sadly, this danger has received almost no coverage in the US media, a lack of interest that could have real consequences for the world.
Dr Cormac O’Raifeartaigh is a senior lecturer in physics at the South East Technological University (Waterford) and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics
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