Before he left the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on Saturday, President Donald Trump held a press conference and was asked about his refusal to take climate change seriously, despite the threat posed by global warming and other climate-related events. Rather than respond with facts, the president went off on a tangent, asserting that fighting climate change would destroy American businesses:
“So we have the best numbers that we’ve ever had recently. I’m not looking to put our companies out of business.
“I’m not looking to create a standard that is so high that we’re going to lose 20-25 percent of our production. I’m not willing to do that. We have the cleanest water we’ve ever had, we have the cleanest air—you saw the reports come out recently. We have the cleanest air we’ve ever had. But I’m not willing to sacrifice the tremendous power of what we’ve built up over a long period of time, and what I’ve enhanced and revived.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5620&v=pel0fTRKk30
Just a couple of weeks ago, Trump also claimed that the United States has the cleanest air and water in the world. But as Common Dreams reports, the Associated Press (AP) did a fact-check and found that to be untrue:
As the Associated Press reported after Trump claimed earlier this month that the U.S. is “setting records environmentally” with its air and water quality, “U.S. does not have the cleanest air, and it hasn’t gotten better under the Trump administration.”
“The U.S. ranks poorly on smog pollution,which kills 24,000 Americans per year,” according to AP. “On a scale from the cleanest to the dirtiest, the U.S. is at 123 out of 195 countries measured.”
According to Politico, Trump also tried to convince other members of the G20 to weaken their own climate goals:
Three senior officials told POLITICO that Trump is trying to enlist the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Australia and Turkey in opposing commitments to stand by the Paris climate agreement made at previous G-20 summits.
It could not possibly be clearer that this president is fully in the bag for large corporations and the richest Americans. He would rather watch the world burn than do anything top protect the environment. We must defeat him in 2020.
Featured Image Via Screenshot
