The people of the Bahamas have a moral right, if not a legal one, to demand damages from the United States for our leading role in the ruination of the planet’s weather systems. They are paying a steep price today for our sins as Hurricane Dorian pounds them, leaving death and ruin in its wake.

The frequency of ferocious storms in the Atlantic has doubled over the last 20 years. We can’t definitively link any one storm to climate change, but the growing frequency of Category 4 and Category 5 hurricanes is exactly what climate scientists predicted. If you are among those who deny the need to change course at this point, then you are immune to rational thought. This isn’t a debate any more about what might happen; it is happening. Sea levels are rising, glaciers are melting, and temperatures are breaking records nearly every year. Mega-storms like Dorian are not only occurring more frequently, they are dumping far heavier rains as they pick up more moisture from warming oceans.

All that was predicted, and all of it is happening now. Worse, the carbon we’ve already released into the atmosphere ensures that these symptoms will get worse.

The people of the Bahamas didn’t do this. But they are suffering the horrid consequences.

And yes, other countries contribute and should be in the docket with us. China is the biggest emitter of all, and even now is building 700 new coal plants across the globe. India is now ranked third and is investing $10 billion in new coal plants itself. And Brazil has given up the fight to protect the Amazon rain forests, which provide about 20 percent of the world’s oxygen.

But the United States under Donald Trump deserves special scorn. Of all the damage he will leave behind when he’s gone, his sabotage of efforts to reduce climate emissions may wind up being the worst of it.

The risk to heavily populated coastlines in the Third World threatens to create massive refugee crises in places like Bangladesh and Malaysia. The melting glaciers and changing rainfall patterns could cripple food production in some regions, causing famines. And the Pentagon worries the chaos could lead to regional wars that undermine our security.

What has Trump done about this? He has worked hard to dismantle every effort that President Obama made to combat. He is charging in the wrong direction, as if this is a personality contest and his mission is to weaken Obama’s legacy.

Trump recently announced plans to weaken rules that guard against methane leaks while drilling for natural gas. That takes direct aim at one of the few encouraging trends in the climate fight, the switch from coal to natural gas, which emits about half as much carbon. Fracking has opened vast new supplies of gas, driving down the price. In New Jersey, PSE&G has converted two coal plants to gas in recent years as a direct result. Nationwide, it’s allowed us to cut the use of coal by 40 percent in the last decade.

But methane leaks could erase or reduce the environmental gain from this switch, since it is even more damaging to the climate than carbon, at least in the short run. Even fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil and Shell are asking Trump to leave the regulations in place.

Trump wants to scale back Obama’s tough automobile efficiency standards as well, and again, major car companies have urged him to back off, including Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW. He has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Accord, gutting any influence we might have had to encourage reform in places like India and Brazil. He repealed regulations Obama enacted that would have effectively blocked construction of new coal plants.

All this is irrational, and given the stakes, frightening. As the people of the Bahamas bury their dead, and dig through the wreckage, we can only hope that Trump and his supporters take note.

More: Tom Moran columns

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or call (973) 836-4909. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.