"Trump Effect": Against the life of the planet

As he is threatening life with his policy regarding the new coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump has ratified that the United States will not make any agreement regarding the climate change, he once again rejected the 2015 Paris Agreement and confirmed that everything is a hoax to destroy the American economy.

Despite the obvious stupidity he emits, some media and many followers support him, making the lives of those against him a living hell, despite the visible effects of such change, as the most frequent and existing of the COVID-19 , with more than 90,000 deaths.

The possible solution was already highlighted months ago by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: global emissions must be drastically cut short over the next 10 years or life on the planet will be unsustainable.

Let’s recall that the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 and ratified by 146 countries and started by 48 others, all united for a single objective: to limit global warming to only two degrees Celsius since that date to this year 2020, but the current North American government decisively facilitated its failure, as customary since Trump came to power, with the unfortunate chance that, despite many mistakes, he might be re-elected next November.

Not long ago, within the agenda of the recent G20 Summit, most attending leaders reaffirmed in the joint final statement their support to the Paris Agreement.

However, the United States was the exception: unlike his peers, President Trump pushed to include a paragraph ratifying his exit from the treaty.

NEGATIVE REPERCUSION

It was in this context that the Institute of International and European Affairs published a study under the name "The Paris Climate Agreement versus the Trump Effect", which recognizes the repercussion that the president's statements have triggered throughout the world.

According to the analysis, the position taken by the U.S. is causing real damage to the Paris Agreement.

Joseph Curtin, the expert in charge of the report, highlights three areas of impact: the investment escalation in fossil fuels - slowing down the investment rate in green technologies -, becoming a harmful example for other nations, and damaging the goodwill in international negotiations.

"There’s absolutely no doubt that the 'Trump Effect' has created a sense of uncertainty in terms of political engagement," the report says.

At the same time, he highlights that investments in coal and oil have won over renewable energy, according to the author, having a global impact.

Finally, he stresses that "in the longer term, without the support of the United States, the Paris Agreement will not be effective and we should be honest about it."

Still, it’s not fatalistic, since the "Trump Effect" will have to stop at some point: "The main economies, international negotiators and investors have adopted, to a certain extent, a 'wait and see' posture before the presidential elections in the United States in November 2020 ”, he concludes.

The study, which sheds new light on the effects of climate change, was published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, known by its acronym PNAS and published weekly by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

The research used data from NASA satellites dedicated to measuring ice loss in Greenland.

Those satellites estimate that between 2002 and 2016, the island lost enough ice to raise sea levels at a rate of 0.7 millimeters a year.

The most recent, just a few days ago, indicate that the situation continues to worsen, because the Greenland ice sheet is getting thinner and thaw increased dramatically in the middle of the last century and has accelerated in recent decades to unprecedented levels, according to a study by a group of researchers from the University of Rowan (U.S.) and which has been published in Nature magazine.

The melting of Greenland is not only an example of how climate change is altering the Arctic, but it’s also contributing to raise global sea levels, the researchers say.

In this context appears the recent information that a possible tsunami will hit Alaska, due to a melting glacier, all as part of another report that a million species are in the brink of extinction due to global warming, which may be very strong in the Mediterranean Sea.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff