Secretary of State John Kerry argued that President-elect Trump and other world leaders do not “have a right” to ignore the scientific consensus on climate change.
“No one has a right to make decisions that affect billions of people based on solely ideology or without proper input,” Kerry said during his speech at the COP-22 conference on climate change in Marrakech, Morocco.
“Anyone who has these conversations, who takes the time to learn from these experts, who gets the full picture of what we’re facing — I believe they can only come to one legitimate decision, and that is to act boldly on climate change and encourage others to do the same.”
President Obama’s team and the United Nations have worked quickly to ratify the Paris deal struck last year, in order to mitigate the possibility that the Republicans would pull out of the agreement after taking the White House. Trump’s victory raises those concerns to a higher pitch, given his statements that climate policy is a “hoax” perpetuated by the Chinese.
Kerry suggested that Trump might change his mind upon taking office.
“While I can’t stand here and speculate about what policies our president-elect will pursue, I will tell you this: In the time that I have spent in public life, one of the things I have learned is that some issues look a little bit different when you’re actually in office compared to when you’re on the campaign trail,” he said. “And the truth is that climate change shouldn’t be a partisan issue in the first place.”
Trump said, late in the election, that “there is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of ‘climate change.'” His campaign manager added that Trump doubts that climate change is caused by human activity. “He believes that global warming is naturally occurring,” Kellyanne Conway said in September. “That climate change is naturally occurring and that shifts are naturally occurring.”
