Climate scientist Michael E. Mann warned it would essentially be “game over” for the fight against global warming should Donald Trump win back the White House in the 2024 election.
Mann, a presidential distinguished professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said Trump would seek to finish the climate-policy-gutting job he began during his first administration. The academic drew a sharp distinction between President Joe Biden’s record on tackling the climate crisis and that of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, who has repeatedly called climate change “bullshit” and dismissed it as a Chinese hoax.
“It’s night and day,” Mann told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi of the climate records of Trump and his successor.
Biden has “helped shepherd the most aggressive climate legislation in U.S. history” with the U.S. Inflation Act with its mission to lower carbon emissions by 40%, he said, noting significant GOP pushback to green initiatives.
Trump, however, is “a president who will basically be a rubber stamp for polluters and right-wing interests who are trying to dismantle not just U.S. climate policy but global climate policy, so it really is about the future of the planet,” Mann warned.
“A second Trump presidency would be more or less game over for climate action,” he added. “It would be game over for domestic climate policy and as goes the U.S., goes the rest of the world when it comes to action on climate.
