New York- Leading American political analyst and philosopher Noam Chomsky has said that US President Donald Trump’s denial of climate change represents worse threat to humanity than Adolf Hitler.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent published on Sunday, the celebrated linguist and media critic said he believes Trump’s victory in the November 3 election could send the planet hurtling further towards environmental catastrophe.
He said the Republican Party is the world’s only large conservative political grouping to deny the existence of climate change, adding that he has identified several patterns over the course of the Trump presidency.
“One is to tear up any deals in which he played no part in creating, such as the 2015 Paris Accord to try and limit the planet’s warming, which Barack Obama helped to broker, and from which Trump has withdrawn the United States,” the newspaper reported.
“He didn’t create it, destroy it, OK,” Chomsky was quoted saying.
Chomsky also made a comparison between Trump and Adolf Hitler, adding that the threat represented by the heating planet is unprecedented.
“The facts are pretty straight; there is almost universal consensus among serious scientists that we are racing towards the cataclysm, if current tendencies persist,” the 91-year-old said.
“By the end of this century, you might have reached the level three, maybe four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. And every analysis concludes that’s a total cataclysm. Organized human societies – nothing survives,” he said.
“We are moving towards cataclysm. There is one country in the world, the United States, that wants to put its foot on the accelerator,” he continued.
The public intellectual and activist, whose many celebrated works include Manufacturing Consent, said the issue of the global coronavirus pandemic can be resolved, but not with “malignant cancer in charge of the policies – someone who moves to destroy anything that doesn’t improve his electoral chances”.
“Definitely the worst one I can think of in history, Adolf Hitler was pretty hideous – [but] he wasn’t trying to destroy organized human society on earth,” he said.
In a previous interview with Democracy Now!, Chomsky called Trump’s Republican Party the most “dangerous organization in human history.”
Chomsky said the Trump administration had shown total disregard for the future of the earth and was determined to dismantling the system in place to tackle climate change.
He said the Trump administration was “systematically” destroying governmental institutions, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, for the sake of “profits and power.”
“Has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organized human life on Earth?” he asked the audience at a Democracy Now! event.
“Not that I’m aware of. Is the Republican organization – I hesitate to call it a party – committed to that? Overwhelmingly. There isn’t even any question about it,” he stated.
Chomsky had predicted the presidency of Trump would be particularly damaging to environment since he does not believe in climate science.
Trump had signed an executive order aimed at rolling back most of his predecessor’s climate change policies, promising that the measure would create jobs in the fossil fuel industry.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Trump had said that he would pull America out of the UN global climate accord if elected, spelling potential doom for a treaty many scientists view as a last chance to limit global warming.
He also promised to roll back environmental policies, actions of the Obama administration and vowed to revive the ailing US oil and coal industries and bolster national security, which he did during his term.
The Paris climate agreement, which deals with greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020, was negotiated by representatives of nearly 200 countries in Paris and adopted by consensus on December 12, 2015.
In another interview with Democracy Now! Chomsky had called the possibility of a nuclear war and global warming greatest threats to the mankind’s existence.
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