Extract from The Nation
Island nations like Kiribati will disappear if Trump goes forward with his energy plans.
If Trump does what he says and rolls back the (insufficient) climate progress won under Obama, inspiring other nations to do the same, Chi-Fang’s nation and culture will almost surely disappear beneath the waves. Literally, the end of their whole world.
Chi-Fang talked about how the Paris climate negotiations was a rare moment of hope. It’s not a perfect text, but island nations waged—and won—a valiant battle to include language reflecting the need to keep warming below 1.5. Celsius. “We didn’t sleep,” she told the crowd.
That 1.5 degree target gives Kiribati and other low-lying islands a fighting chance at survival. But we know that meeting that target, or even the more lenient 2 degree one, means we cannot sink a single piece of new fossil-fuel infrastructure. We have already blown our carbon budget just with the fossil fuels currently in production.
Donald Trump, in his “100-day plan to Make America Great Again,” unveiled at the end of October, made it clear that he intends to grab carbon as aggressively as he brags about grabbing women. Here are a few of his immediate plans:
- allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to move forward
- lifting restrictions on fossil-fuel production
- canceling “billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs”
This is just some of what is at stake if Trump does what he says he will do. We cannot let him. Outside the United States, we need to start demanding economic sanctions in the face of this treaty-shredding lawlessness. In North America, where the carbon that Trump wants to unleash is currently buried, we all need to get ready to warrior up—and if you want to know what that looks like, turn your eyes to Standing Rock.
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