There is a fundamental difference between US President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump regarding climate change. Obama not only believes in critical scientific beliefs like global warming, but takes steps for a positive change also. Trump, on the contrary, believes the entire concept is a hoax.
Trump even claimed earlier that global warming was a Chinese hoax. Activists are deeply concerned how the president-elect is going to tackle the issue, if he does not believe in the cause in the first place.
Obama, meanwhile, continues to take steps against factors that harm the environment. The Interior Department has proposed the 2017-2022 OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program. Going along the plan, the Obama administration has imposed a ban on drilling in the Alaskan Arctic.
Donald Trump may try and kill the program. But, that will also mean having an alternate plan. It will take at least a couple of years to come up with a replacement. Climate change activists are anyway worried if the Trump administration would undo all the positive changes Obama has made.
Obama is, nevertheless, aware of such possibilities. The White House apparently has plans to ensure Obama's effort do not go waste even after he leaves office in January. According to David Goldston, it won't be easy to change the White House policy on climate change.
"Donald Trump can't just snap his fingers and change climate policy," said the New York Times quoted the director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council as saying. "We have ways to thwart him in Congress and the courts that we could employ."
This may come as a bit of relief for activists that President-elect Donald Trump now has an open mind regarding the issue. He has said that he finds "some connectivity" between climate change and human actions. Even though he claimed during his campaign that he would pull out of the Paris agreement as a president, he now says he is open to discussions regarding the issue.
