Accepting climate change is real and then doing nothing about it is Trump’s most damaging mistake yet

To accept that rising temperatures are a thing, only to refuse to do anything about it, is arguably even grimmer than putting on a fur coat and proclaiming that global warming is a product of Chinese propaganda

‘Something’s changing…’ he acknowledged in an interview with US show ‘60 Minutes’, ‘…and it’ll change back again’ (CBS)

So, after all, Donald Trump doesn’t think climate change is a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese as a deliberate ploy to undermine America’s industrial competitiveness. That, you might think, means he will now take the issue seriously. Don’t get your hopes up though.

Talking to CBS’s 60 Minutes programme this weekend, Trump said he remained unconvinced that the rise in global temperatures was a consequence of human activity. “Something’s changing…” he acknowledged, “…and it’ll change back again.” How, he did not explain. Indeed, as for doing anything to reverse the present warming trend, he made clear: “I don’t want to give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don’t want to lose millions and millions of jobs.”

All this comes a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that we have twelve years until we reach the tipping point at which a 1.5C rise in global temperatures leads to the kind of flooding that will devastate low-lying areas of the globe. This in turn will have an impact on everyone, as people are forced to migrate away from affected regions and seek refuge elsewhere.