Guest essay by Eric Worrall

How could President Trump ignore the most world’s most important leading scientists?

Trump State of the Union speech: what climate change experts say

Emily Holden in Washington

Thu 7 Feb 2019 01.20 AEDT

Top scientists condemn State of the Union address and say future presidents must confront climate change as urgent priority

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Lisa Graumlich, the dean of the environment college at the University of Washington, attended the State of the Union address as a guest of the Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

“I have been doing research on climate change since the 1970s, and it always seemed very far away in time and space. It was something that was going to happen when people’s grandchildren were alive. And that has changed,” Graumlich said. “I don’t think that future presidents will find themselves in this position, because people are feeling the effects of climate change.”

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Even the Democratic rebuttal to Trump’s speech, by the ex-Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, only mentioned climate change once, in a list of priorities the US could pursue. However, Bernie Sanders, in his own response speech, noted warnings in reports from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“How can a president of the United States give a State of the Union speech and not mention – not one word – about climate change when the leading scientists of the world tell us that climate change is real, that climate change is caused by human activity, that climate change is already causing devastating harm in the United States,” Sanders said. “Furthermore, the scientists tell us we have a very short, 12 years, not a lot of time in order to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels.”

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