Citizen University

Last week at the United Nations, Donald Trump showed the world just how little he values human life. In a single speech, he rattled off a laundry list of “hoaxes” to write off: climate change, AI, “Russia hoax,” “Ukraine hoax,” and more. Climate change, AI, and modern warfare all pose existential threats to civilization as we know it, and yet our president seems hellbent on gaslighting our fears while accelerating problems that threaten our survival. What would make a person behave in such a self-sabotaging way? Well, perhaps we should, as they say, follow the money.

Earlier this month, the UN warned that Earth is already 1.4°C hotter than before the industrial age and set to blow past the 1.5°C limit in the next few years. The World Health Organization projects that such warming will cause roughly 250,000 additional deaths a year starting in 2030. Any leader who values human life should recognize this as the existential threat it is and change course. Instead, Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the UN's founding climate treaty, and his EPA scrapped the scientific finding underpinning federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, in the first six months since launching his war in Iran, Trump's nine largest oil and gas holdings gained up to $4.4 million.