Even before Donald Trump hijacked the Republican Party, he was loudly declaring in 2012 that the science of climate change was a Chinese hoax "created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
The implication is clear. Back in the late 1980s, when climate change was first publicly identified as a threat, those sneaky Chinese must have bought or blackmailed prominent Western leaders and scientists to perpetrate this hoax. At the time, most grown-ups wrote Trump off as a harmless crank — but they certainly have to take him seriously now.
Trump has promised that within 100 days of taking office he will "cancel" the Paris climate agreement and "stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs." He will also rescind the executive actions that President Barack Obama has taken to limit U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, especially in the field of electricity.