Climate Scientists' Worst Nightmare - Four More Years of Trump

The idea of Donald Trump winning a second term terrifies a lot of people, especially climate scientists. Climate change is only part of their worries. From the MIT Technology Review:

Daniel Schrag has spent most of his life working on climate change. He studied the planet’s ancient warming periods early in his career, served as a climate advisor to President Barack Obama, and is now director of Harvard’s Center for the Environment. 

But when he imagines the possibilities if President Donald Trump is reelected, climate change isn’t the issue he’s most concerned about. 

“I immediately worry about democratic institutions,” he says. “I worry about profound and deep corruption at all levels, including the Justice Department.”

“The good news is that four years later, or whenever this ends, there are still a lot of things you can do for climate,” says Schrag. “But that’s not true if we have decimated the basic institutions of democracy.

I heard similar responses again and again as I polled climate scientists and policy experts on what a Trump reelection would mean. After years of watching the administration unravel climate policies, subvert the rule of law, stack courts, politicize a pandemic, undermine the election process, and hint about third and fourth terms, the people I asked are terrified of what the president may do if he remains in office for another four years or more.

 

Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution, said: “Well, first of all, there’s the question of ‘Will the US become a dictatorial, totalitarian regime?’”

 

Danny Cullenward, a lecturer at Stanford’s law school, replied: “There’s no climate policy angle to that story. The United States is then a failed state.”