Another day under the Trump administration, another sociopathic idiot vaulted into the halls of power. This time, it’s William Happer, a National Security Council senior director, who Trump has tapped to chair a Presidential Committee on Climate Security, according to Vox. Great!
Happer is a well-known climate change denier with some far-out views on our rapidly warming planet. In 2014, on CNBC, Happer compared environmentalists hatred of carbon dioxide to “the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler.” A totally normal comparison!
First they came for the greenhouse gasses, but I did not speak out, because I was not a greenhouse gas.
Incredibly, this is not the only time Happer has made this comparison. In 2017, Happer emailed a Jezebel reader, writing that the “demonization of CO2... really differs little from the Nazi persecution of the Jews, the Soviet extermination of class enemies or ISIL slaughter of infidels.”
Hopper is a retired Princeton professor and not a climate scientist. Much of his research has been funded by oil companies.
The new committee that Hopper will chair was created in response to a report by the Pentagon, released last month, which detailed the possible national security threats that could result from climate change. They warned that “extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security” could result from climate change, “undermin[ing] the economic benefits they provide, worsened by air, soil, water, and marine pollution.”
This new committee may spend more time attempting to obscure those effects than they do preparing for them. A paper by the NSC discussing recent federal climate reports obtained by the Washington Post says that “these scientific and national security judgments have not undergone a rigorous independent and adversarial scientific peer review to examine the certainties and uncertainties of climate science, as well as implications for national security.”
So, it seems our government will continue to do nothing but make climate change worse, paying stooges like Happer to justify it.
If only a group of lawmakers were plotting an alternate strategy that could help save us all from climate apocalypse. Oh well.