National, U.S. – Donald Trump has announced his early picks for his presidential cabinet, and the U.S. election results now show that the Republican party will have control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
JL Andrepont, 350.org U.S. Senior Policy Analyst, said:
“As Trump continues to announce his U.S. cabinet appointees and unveil plans for when he takes office, some of our worst fears are already being confirmed: Trump plans to walk back and reverse any progress the U.S. has made on climate and every other important move towards greater equity we have made in the last 50+ years. He is planning mass deportations and to gut social services. And we now know that Trump will have Republican control of both chambers of Congress. As this all unfolds, the impacts of climate change increasingly threaten parts of the U.S. that were previously considered ‘safe’. Back-to-back major hurricanes accelerated at a rate that left meteorologists stunned. Both coasts are facing worsening drought conditions that have led to wildfires and water shortages.
The dangers of having this climate-denying, racist, violent demagogue in office again are real and horrifying. We also know that the U.S. has historically emitted the most greenhouse gasses since 1850, was founded on the destruction of Indigenous tribal nations and the enslavement of Black people, and has a long record of war crimes in the Middle East and Asia. The Biden administration is still supplying the Israeli government with the weapons to commit genocide and ecocide in Gaza, and Trump has no plans of changing course.
Trump is not single-handedly steering us afield, he is trying to take us deeper into the extractivism that’s been written into this country’s roots. We must transcend those historic trappings and remain clear-eyed in the knowledge that white supremacy and patriarchy have always been at the root of climate injustice. As Trump doubles down on isolationism and oppression, we must think and act both locally and globally and refuse to be misled.”