A Vote for Trump Is a Vote for Environmental Devastation

It’s not uncommon for our political pundits here in the US to be completely wrong with their predictions—sometimes embarrassingly so.  But we need to give them credit when they forecasted that this presidential election campaign was going to degenerate into some of the nastiest mudslinging the country has ever seen.

Of course, we at 2GreenEnergy tend to look at the world through the lens of energy and the environment, and, coincidentally, this, as described in this op-ed from yesterday’s New York Times, may be the precise issue in which the divide between the two candidates is the most pronounced.  Hillary Clinton is sure to continue along with the lines of Obama, whose signature legislation in this arena has been the Clean Power Act, along with many dozens of other important improvements in the U.S. approach to energy.

What about Trump? Well, the first point to consider is that no one knows precisely what he would do, since he’s so inconsistent, so indifferent to telling the truth about his previous positions, and so erratic that it’s hard to know if he would do anything of the things he said he would. Thus, to answer the question, we have to take certain guesses based what on he’s said, e.g., climate change is a hoax, we’re going to support the coal industry, we’re rescinding our agreement to be a part of the Paris Climate Accord, we’re eliminating the EPA, and we’re removing all regulation that currently restricts the generation of energy.

For a moment, put aside all the other horrors that a Trump presidency would do to the standing of the U.S. in the world, and the pulling back of all the progress we’ve made over the past half a century, and focus our attention solely on the rapid decline in the health of the environment. When we do that, we see that a President Trump would eliminate any possibility for a soft landing for humankind on this planet.

My prediction: Trump will suffer the biggest landslide defeat since 1972, and possibly in the entirety of U.S. history.  Why?  People who honestly care about the future of the planet will almost uniformly vote against him.  On top of that, think of the realm of other constituencies with which he’s going to perform abysmally: women, Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, true Christians, LGBTs, educated people, and young folks, to name a few.

At that point, we can go about the monumental task of rebuilding our reputation as a nation, and re-establishing respect we formerly enjoyed from the rest of the countries on Earth.