The uproar over President Donald Trump’s summit in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin has extended into the climate change debate.
Climate activist Eric Holthaus is warning the world that “the Trump-Putin alliance as a deliberate attempt to delay action on climate change.” In a July 16 article at Grist, Holthaus declared that President and Trump and Putin were “colluding to destroy our planet’s climate system.” “Trump and Putin are clearly in cahoots — over propping up fossil fuels,” he wrote, adding, “the quicker we resolve to move away from our dependence on fossil fuels, the quicker Putin and Trump will become powerless.”
Climate activist Joe Romm, a former Clinton Administration official, declared of the Trump/Putin summit the “world’s biggest climate villains team up to do more damage to the environment.” “If Putin keeps swaying elections toward pro-pollution populists in America and Europe, climate action is doomed,” Romm wrote on July 16.
Romm summed up the summit this way: “The world’s increasingly desperate effort to preserve a livable climate just took another hit, now that the two biggest climate villains — Putin and Trump — have clearly teamed up.”
To Romm, President Trump pulling out of the UN Paris climate pact is evidence that Trump is colluding with Putin. “Putin has never liked the Paris deal because it means a large fraction of Russia’s fossil fuel reserves would remain in the ground, unable to provide vast revenue for him and the Kremlin,” Romm wrote.
“Trump could and did announce last June his intention to unilaterally pull this country out of the Paris agreement,” Romm wrote. “Trump himself came out of the Helsinki summit downplaying the impact of global warming more than usual,” Romm added.
Holthaus warned: “By working together, they can keep the global economy swimming in oil and gas. And what’s the primary force working against the fossil fuel industry these days? Climate activists. It’s not difficult to see the Trump-Putin alliance as a deliberate attempt to delay action on climate change. Consider these moves: Trump’s promise to withdraw from the Paris climate accord was specifically designed to weaken that agreement — and the spirit of cooperation it helped embody.”
