Seven years ago Donald Trump signed an advertisement in the New York Times urging action on climate legislation, but today he wants the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords. A June 2016 article in Vox (reprinted from Grist) titled Donald Trump once backed urgent climate action. Wait, what? reveals his views in 2009:
As negotiators headed to Copenhagen in December 2009 to forge a global climate pact, concerned U.S. business leaders and liberal luminaries took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for aggressive climate action. In an open letter to President Obama and the U.S. Congress, they declared: “If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.”
One of the signatories of that letter: Donald Trump.
Also signed by Trump’s three adult children, the letter called for passage of U.S. climate legislation, investment in the clean energy economy, and leadership to inspire the rest of the world to join the fight against climate change.
“We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today,” the letter tells the president and Congress. “Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet.”
The Grist article contains a replica of the NYT advertisement with the names of the signers. It also states that “In every conceivable way,” the open letter “contradicts Trump’s current stance on climate policy.”
The article also includes more recent evidence of Trump’s support for climate action: a 2014 letter signed by Trump when he sent a $5,000 check to Protect Our Winters, “a climate advocacy nonprofit for skiers and snowboarders, after a Celebrity Apprentice contestant requested his support.” grist.org/…
One wonders which of the Republican climate change deniers has influenced Trump to change his views so drastically.