Trump 'worst possible scenario' for climate action, scientist says; places blame on mainstream media

Michael Mann speaking at the
American Climate Leadership Summit

Electing Donald Trump president was the "worst possible scenario" for U.S. action on climate change, said Dr. Michael E. Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and one of the scientific community's most vocal advocates for climate action, Marie Cusick reports for StateImpact Pennsylvania.

Mann told Cusick, "I couldn’t have outlined anything much more bleak than what we’ve seen. We’ve had the election of a president who is on record as a climate change denier and has appointed other climate change deniers to key posts."

Mann says journalists are partly to blame for failing to emphasize the importance of climate change in the election, Cusick writes. "Climate change didn’t get the attention it deserved. It wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of Hillary Clinton. Full disclosure—I was a member of her advisory board on energy and climate. She’d go out of her way to comment on climate change, even in answering questions that weren’t explicitly about it. It didn’t seem to catch on. I won’t criticize all media outlets, but writ large, our mainstream media didn’t seem very interested."

Mann told Cusick: "We’re not going to see progress from the executive branch. We’re not going to see it in Congress. We’ll have to look elsewhere . . . We’re seeing progress at the state level. The future is a clean energy future. That’s where the world is headed. We have to decide whether to get on that train now, and be part of the solution, or be left out of the greatest economic revolution of this century."