Just five months after the devastating result of the European Union referendum, and the struggle against the forces of darkness seemed to have just become even harder. Donald Trump’s election left the many in the United States reeling. In particular his success has left women, people of colour and those with disabilities feeling more vulnerable than ever. The land of the free seems a lot less free than before.
Americans aren’t the only ones who fear a Trump presidency. His win reinforced a right-wing populism that is resurgent across the western world, but also threatens to slow down the global movement against climate change. Not only does the president-elect not believe that climate change is man-made, but his cabinet level appointments show an utter disregard for our environment.
An astounding nine members of his top team deny even basic climate science – with his secretary of state (who is in charge of international climate policy), Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil. Trump’s policy proposals – to end the moratorium on coal mining, to support new fossil fuel infrastructure and to scrap Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan – are exceptionally reckless. There’s a reason that the outgoing president poured half billion dollars into the Green Climate Fund this week. It’s because he knows that Trump is planning to end such payments and that global action on climate change is under threat.
The boost for climate change deniers has distinct parallels here in Britain. The leave side of the EU campaign was first registered in the same building as Lord Lawson’s climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation (and Lawson chaired the Vote Leave campaign). Many politicians who were prominent in the Brexit campaign – such as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage – are known to have been climate change sceptics. We’re in danger of such concerns being painted as some sort of metropolitan preoccupation, rather than the very real threat it poses to all of our livelihoods.
Clearly, Trump’s election poses a threat to the climate movement but, worrying as it is, it is neutralised to some extent by its global nature: from the First Nations communities blocking the Keystone pipeline, to the energy co-operatives springing up across the world and the anti-fracking campaigns here in Britain.
For every attempt to extract fossil fuels from the ground, there are people dedicated to keep them where they should be. The economics is also stacked against climate change deniers. Renewables are competing with and beating fossil fuels when it comes to cost. Huge investment in China has seen the country installing enough solar panels to cover three football pitches for every hour of 2016, thus forcing prices down even further. Additionally – and looking specifically at the situation in the US – Trump’s damaging plans will be curtailed in a federal system where many key Republican states have thriving low-carbon economies and will resist attempts to cut funding.
Like many of those reading this, I am truly worried about the effects of Trumpism, but I am hopeful that the politics of hate will be overcome. That’s why tomorrow I will be joining one of the more than one hundred Bridges Not Walls actions taking place across the world – bringing together people who reject the idea that the future of our world is owned by a gold-plated billionaire.
It’s why I’m working with climate campaigners to urge Britain to step up and fill any void left by the US by becoming a world leader on renewables and storage.
There is no turning back time on the US elections, and tomorrow Trump will become president, but that does not leave us powerless – indeed his swearing-in should be a call to action, not a time to shrink away.