Two Big Reasons to Worry About Trump
Two Big Reasons to Worry About Trump
Nuclear Proliferation and Climate Change Under Trump
The two biggest existential threats to the planet are nuclear proliferation and war (apocalypse now) and climate-driven crises (apocalypse sooner or later). The Trump administration appears to be committed to “modernizing” America’s nuclear triad (now estimated to cost $2 trillion) while burning fossil fuels at record rates. As I wrote back in 2020, 2017, and 2016, Trump’s positions on nuclear weapons and global warming make him dangerous to the planet. All Americans, indeed all people, need to focus on these twin perils to planetary health and the survival of humanity.
From 2020:
Back in 2016, I wrote an article on two big reasons not to vote for Donald Trump. Those reasons, his denial of climate change and his cavalier approach to nuclear weapons, remain valid. But I’d like to add two more that we were unaware of in 2016: his total inability to bring people together, his divide and rule approach to everything, and his murderously incompetent response to Covid-19.
If there are any lukewarm Trump supporters reading this, I hope you join me in voting your conscience, which in my case meant rejecting both Trump and Biden for candidates I believe in (in my case, Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders). [I wrote-in Gabbard/Sanders on my 2020 presidential ballot.]
Don’t vote for a man-child, Donald Trump, who’s golfing and tweeting while the planet burns; who has no idea what nuclear weapons can do, but who threatens to use them while bragging about the size of his nuclear button; who dismisses Covid-19 as just another virus that will magically disappear; and who is so eager to divide us in the cause of enriching himself and his family.
From 2017:
Trump’s recent call for more nuclear weapons, so that the U.S. can be clearly “at the top of the pack,” is reckless as well as wasteful. Reckless because it may fuel a new nuclear arms race, and wasteful because the U.S. is already clearly at the top. Meanwhile, Trump continues to enact policies that can only accelerate global warming/climate change. He is wrong on two of the biggest issues facing the safety of humanity today, even as he bloviates about “safety” to be attained by building walls and deporting immigrants for the most minor infractions.
What’s driving much of this, of course, is money. A trillion dollars for nuclear modernization [now $2 trillion in 2024] over the next generation. Trillions of dollars to be made in the fossil fuel industry. And much money to be made by some at least in building walls and forcing out immigrants.
A Biblical passage comes to mind: When the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit. Trump is a blind man, leading his blind followers straight into the pit. The question is whether they’ll take the planet (and the rest of us) with them.
From 2016:
Two Big Reasons Not to Vote for Trump
W.J. Astore
Nuclear proliferation and global warming are two big issues that Donald Trump is wrong about. They’re also the two biggest threats to our planet. Nuclear war followed by nuclear winter could end most life on earth within a matter of weeks or months. Global warming/climate change, though not as immediate a threat as nuclear war and its fallout, is inexorably leading to a more dangerous and less hospitable planet for our children and their children.
What does “The Donald” believe? On nuclear proliferation, which only makes nuclear war more likely, Trump is essentially agnostic and even in favor of other nations joining the nuclear club, nations like Japan, South Korea, even Saudi Arabia. When all countries should be earnestly working to reduce and then eliminate nuclear stockpiles, Trump is advocating their expansion. (An aside: recall in a previous debate that Trump had no idea what America’s nuclear triad is; add intellectual sloth to his many sins.)
On global warming, Trump is essentially a skeptic on whether it exists (“hoax” and “con job” are expressions of choice), even as he seeks to protect his resorts from its effects. Along with this rank hypocrisy, Trump is advocating an energy plan that is vintage 1980, calling for more burning of fossil fuels, more drilling and digging, more pipelines, as if fossil fuel consumption was totally benign to the environment and to human health.
Along with his tyrannical and fascist tendencies, Trump is wrong on two of the biggest issues facing our planet today. His ignorance and recklessness render him totally unfit to be president.
Coda (2024): One can only hope Trump learned something since 2016. That he learned nuclear weapons can be reduced if not eliminated entirely, and that climate crises are not “Chinese hoaxes.” I must admit I don’t see solid evidence that Republicans in general are interested in acting to safeguard our planet from threats of nuclear war and ongoing climate change. At least Tulsi Gabbard has spoken out strongly against the threat of nuclear war; I hope she has Trump’s ear. Trump as well mentioned the threat of nuclear war in his debate with Kamala Harris. You might say Trump recognizes a nuclear apocalypse will be bad for business. Hard to make a deal when all the deal-makers are dead.
As Rush Limbaugh proclaimed in 2019, “Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus.”
Thus, we cling to the delusion that dollar supremacy shall reign supreme now and forevermore, and Blue Team loyalists assume that debt doesn’t matter because we can mint those trillion dollar coins when push comes to shove.
We can spend trillions year-on-year, because 1) it is too big a number for anyone to actually relate to; 2) because it keeps the air in the mega balloon floating Wall Street and corporations—especially in the MIC; and 3) because we have lost all sense of thrift and stewardship. And in losing any sense of stewardship, so too have we lost any moral compass.
Climate change is a hopeless debate if we're unable to get beyond the 'is/is not' happening, which is now primarily ideological. Two pertinent questions then don't get discussed or debated.
First, climate change is happening. The deep ocean sediment studies over the last 40 years or so reveal 11 glacial/inter glacial periods in the last 800 years (with over 30 of each in the last 2 million years). The last glacial period ended around 18,000 years ago - in the current interglacial, sea level rise could be another 200 feet, based on the geological record. So, humans haven't caused it.
Have humans contributed to it and can humans do it anything to lessen it (ruling out stopping it from above)? Those are the two questions that should be debated in the political and public spaces.
And no, those discussions won't be happening anytime soon. And how seriously is anyone going to take it when the elite 'climate activists' fly to global meetings (and everywhere) on their private jets?