Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said in a speech Wednesday night that Republicans won’t act on the climate crisis because the party doesn’t want to raise taxes or ask people to change their “lifestyle.”
“We take the position in my party that asking people to change their lifestyle dramatically, including by paying more taxes, is simply not something we are interested in doing,” Mulvaney said in response to a question on why the U.S. government is not doing more to combat the climate emergency.
The audience in attendance at the speech in the United Kingdom laughed at Mulvaney’s response, according to an audio recording obtained by the Washington Post.
Nathan Richardson, a law professor at the University of South Carolina and a fellow at the non-profit research organization Resources for the Future, tweeted that Mulvaney and the GOP’s position on climate “is increasingly a political loser.”
“And it is naive and shortsighted: Inaction is a choice that will force ‘lifestyle changes,’” Richardson added. “The water will come.”
Another Twitter user put it more bluntly: “Drowning is also a lifestyle change.”
Mulvaney, who in 2017 called federal spending on climate research “a waste of your money,” questioned whether human activity is driving global temperature rises — despite the near-unanimous consensus among climate scientists.
The debate over climate in the U.S., said Mulvaney, is “less so as to whether or not it’s happening, more so as to its causes.”
The Hill reported Thursday that President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2021 calls for slashing “funding for the National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers, eliminating all $38 million for research to help wildlife and humans ‘adapt to a changing climate.’”
Joel Clement, senior fellow at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told The Hill that “the presidential budget is all about sending signals.”
“The signal they’re trying to send is: We do not value climate science,” said Clement.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 231 new monthly donors in the next 2 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy