Niklas Endres
This blog post was produced as part of the course “Social Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States” at the University of Turku.
“I don´t believe it” (BBC News, 2018). This is how the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, commented on the results of a climate change report in 2018. What may sound like a joke at first is sadly dead serious. One of the most powerful men in the world does not believe in one of the biggest issues of our time.
The U.S. is already experiencing impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise, ongoing droughts, and an increasing amount of natural disasters. After China, the U.S. has the second highest amount of natural disasters (cf. Statista, 2016). Although President Obama already introduced the “Clean Power Plan,” which is a political strategy to fight the extent of climate change (cf. climatenexus, 2019), current U.S. President Donald Trump denies any proof for climate change developments in the last years.
“Fridays for Future,” climate marches, and increasing attention towards our climate and environmental protection take this discussion to a whole new level. People are protesting against the narrow-minded views of the President, they do not stay at home and wait for our planet to finally get destroyed. Instead, they fight for their opinions and for our world.
Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old climate activist who called the Fridays for Future movement into being (and of whom most of you should already have heard of), was absurdly mocked by Donald Trump via Twitter after her passionate speech at the UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019 (cf. Der Tagesspiegel, 2019). After Thunberg criticized world leaders for not engaging enough in government actions concerning environmental protection, the President of the United States decided to react by sneering “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see.“ (Twitter, 2019).
After reading this text, one might ask how someone so narrow-minded can still be in one of the highest governmental positions on our planet, and how can we make the U.S. President finally change his mind and accept the consequences of undeniable facts? I think the only way to answer those questions is to show support and fight for our future. Even President Trump needs to keep his electors in mind when making decisions, and if he sees that people are not satisfied with his politics, he must re-think his actions. It seems like in the end, we are responsible for our own future and we have the power to make changes in this world.
Sources:
- BBC News (2018, November 28). “Trump on climate change report: ´I don´t believe it´”. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46351940
- Climatenexus (2019). “Climate Change in the U.S.”. https://climatenexus.org/climate-change-usa/
- A. Breitkopf, (2018, December 19). “Countries with the most natural disasters 2016”. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/163496/umfrage/laender-mit-den-meisten-naturkatastrophen/
- Der Tagesspiegel (2019, September 24). “Donald Trump verspottet Greta Thunberg”. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/ein-sehr-glueckliches-junges-maedchen-donald-trump-verspottet-greta-thunberg/25048404.html
- Donald J. Trump (2019, September 23). https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1176339522113679360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tagesspiegel.de%2Fpolitik%2Fein-sehr-glueckliches-junges-maedchen-donald-trump-verspottet-greta-thunberg%2F25048404.html