{"id":594,"date":"2020-01-23T20:15:59","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T17:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/?p=594"},"modified":"2022-10-13T16:10:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T13:10:48","slug":"climate-change-no-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/2020\/01\/23\/climate-change-no-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change? No way!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Niklas Endres<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This blog post was produced as part of the course \u201cSocial Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States\u201d at the University of Turku.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u00b4t believe it\u201d (BBC News, 2018). This\nis how the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, commented\non the results of a climate change report in 2018. What may sound like a joke\nat first is sadly dead serious. One of the most powerful men in the world does\nnot believe in one of the biggest issues of our time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/flag-of-america-1590766\/ <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cClean Power Plan,\u201d 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFridays for Future,\u201d climate marches, and\nincreasing attention towards our climate and environmental protection take this\ndiscussion to a whole new level. People are protesting against the\nnarrow-minded views of the President, they do not stay at home and wait for our\nplanet to finally get destroyed. Instead, they fight for their opinions and for\nour world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old climate\nactivist who called the Fridays for Future movement into being (and of whom most\nof you should already have heard of), was absurdly mocked by Donald Trump via\nTwitter after her passionate speech at the UN Climate Action Summit in\nSeptember 2019 (cf. Der Tagesspiegel, 2019). After Thunberg criticized world\nleaders for not engaging enough in government actions concerning environmental\nprotection, the President of the United States decided to react by sneering \u201cShe seems like a very happy young\ngirl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see.\u201c\n(Twitter, 2019). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/people-holding-banner-2561628\/ <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources: <\/p>\n\n\n\n