W.J. Astore
Let’s state the obvious: Donald Trump is a climate change denier. And this is for political as well as petty reasons. When it comes to his investments, his resorts, he is not stupid enough to deny the evidence of his own eyes. As I wrote a year ago:
On global warming, Trump is essentially a skeptic on whether it exists (“hoax” and “con job” are expressions of choice), even as he seeks to protect his resorts from its effects. Along with this rank hypocrisy, Trump is advocating an energy plan that is vintage 1980, calling for more burning of fossil fuels, more drilling and digging, more pipelines, as if fossil fuel consumption was totally benign to the environment and to human health.
His climate change skepticism is politically motivated and calculated to appeal to his base. No surprise there. But Trump also revels in anti-intellectualism, which has a strong tradition in the U.S.
Sure, intellectuals mess up, and more than a few can find a fourth side to every three-sided problem. But Trump only sees one side to every three-sided problem. His side. Like a temperamental child, he thinks he can create his own reality, regardless of facts. And the rest of us now have to put up with the spoiled brat until 2020 (or impeachment, which is unlikely before 2018, at the earliest).
Trump reminds me of the spoiled kid in the famous “Twilight Zone” episode, “It’s A Good Life.” In that episode, a six-year-old kid prone to temper tantrums and getting his own way rules with absolute power over his parents and the townfolk of “Peaksville.”
Anyone who offends the petty tyrant (played memorably by Billy Mumy) is punished, often in gruesome ways. A more merciful result is to be “sent to the cornfield,” a euphemism for death.
Welcome to Peaksville, America. And think only good thoughts of our six-year-old leader. Unless, of course, you prefer the cornfield.
Bracing Views 
The episode of Twilight Zone you reference was one of the most frightening. A small boy who demanded happiness from everyone for his leadership. Those who were not sufficiently happy, or rebellious were destroyed.
I recall having a discussion with a person who said the earth’s climate is always changing. True 25,000 years ago the house I live in was under about a half a mile of glacial ice. There is a critical difference our human ability to change the earth eco-systems. As an example in 1885 there were no automobiles.
According to industry trade journal Ward’s, which added up both reported vehicle registrations and historical trends, the total crossed 1 billion sometime last year. (This was in 2010)
The vehicles include passenger cars, light-, medium-, and heavy-duty trucks, and buses, but not off-road or heavy construction vehicles.
Bear in mind that is over billion vehicles registered today. It does not include all those vehicles that came off the assembly lines since Henry Ford’s day and were driven and junked.
A book I read years ago, that was actually written in the late 1940’s (name of the book escapes me) mentioned Americans (read White Europeans) have viewed America with the idea the grass is greener over the next hill. Natural resources were there to be exploited until they ran out. Humans wiped out the passenger pigeon and nearly the American Bison. Some of our cash crops were particularly hard on the soil, depleting it.
This exploitation leads to another word a cost named externalities. Think of it this way a steel mill or mining can avoid the cost of externalities by simply dumping their waste into nearest river, or venting it into the air. The externality is something I do to you or a company does to you without your permission. This is the reason we have environmental laws, one person or even a neighborhood is not going to be successful against the Mega-Corporations pollution.
Trump with his usually whiz-bang approach is trumpeting the virtues of coal. I am virtually certain he would have strong objections if the over burden from the mining and coal ash were dumped next to Mar a Lago.
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Your comment reminds me of the petroleum executive who opposed fracking when it came to his neighborhood and threatened his house. A classic case of NIMBY — not in my backyard. But he was all for fracking when it was in the rural areas of the working classes.
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