We would also have had Donald Trump’s “drill baby drill”, an ode to fossil fuels, the phrase “alarmist nonsense about the climate” from the same author. More than words, the White House’s decisions illustrate how American policy agrees with that of Gianni Infantino, president of the International Football Federation (FIFA) to ignore the climate crisis and even amplify it.
On May 21, Trump lifted restrictions on powerful fluorinated greenhouse gases (GHGs), used in refrigeration and air conditioning, which have record warming power. The devastating hydraulic fracturing continues for the exploitation of shale gas.
A compass: oil
In the country of automobiles, where the average GHG emissions per capita is the highest in the world, foreign policy follows the oil compass: in Venezuela, in Iran, with the opposite effect of an explosion in prices at the pump of around 45% between the start of operations and today.
In this World Cup with extended travel by supporters, its stadiums poorly served by public transport whose parking lots swallow up thousands of cars, the bill will be heavy, at the pumps of individuals and on kerosene bills for planes. The prices of tickets and hotels were already skyrocketing… If there were only credit cards, the blue planet was also overheating.
Terres brûlées, ou inondées
All the studies and projections of hundreds of scientists show the current and future devastation, before 2050, and the United States has the full range. Hurricanes and floods, rising water levels (especially on the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico), major fires (California), extreme cold (in the center, last fall), mega drought throughout the West, as in July 2021.
In a realistic scenario of warming of +2 degrees in 2100, Florida would be 180 days per year above the deadly temperature threshold, 100 days for the Mexican West (coastal) and the American East (IPCC report, 2022, Editor’s note).
Not all of America is Trump. In 2023, a Yale University study showed that only 16% of Americans do not believe in climate change. Since the 2000s, most of the country’s large cities have initiated transition policies. Fourteen, including New York, San Francisco, Miami, Boston and Los Angeles, are part of the Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) which brings together around a hundred metropolises around the world, including Paris, the only one in France.
