Donald Trump has claimed that climate change is a “hoax” being led by the Chinese and promised to “cancel” the historic Paris Agreement.
So it came as little surprise that there is trepidation surrounding President-elect Donald Trump’s views on what one expert describes as the “biggest future instability” facing the planet.
As the world’s leading experts on climate change meet at COP22 in Marrakech to discuss the future of the planet, some are beginning to fear that Trump could yet derail plans aimed at ensuring the future safety of the global environment.
According to the CNN, Trump has been clear in his opposition to the deal struck in Paris last year; he has also been a fierce critic of the Clean Power Plan.
He has said that he would scrap the programme which is meant to target existing coal-fired and natural gas power plants, with a goal of reducing greenhouse emissions in the US by as much as 32 per cent by 2030.
“I hope that his rhetoric doesn’t match his actions. I’ve read an analysis saying that people take what he says seriously, but not him seriously. Maybe we should do the opposite and disregard what he says,” senior climate change specialist, Rasmus Lauridsen, at European Investment Bank, told CNN.
Executive director at the Sabin Centre for Climate Change Law, Mike Burger, told CNN that “Trump’s election has been met here by Americans and the international community with a great deal of concern for what it means for our climate, our environmental quality and the safety and well-being of people around the world.
“Trump’s campaign position on climate change was that it was a Chinese hoax, an irrational, nonsensical idea, that is also plainly wrong.