“If nations do not implement current commitments then show a massive increase in ambition …the Paris Agreement target of holding global warming to 1.5C will be dead within a few years and 2C will take its place in the intensive care unit.”

So said Inger Andersen, the UN’s environment chief, prior to the COP29 climate conference last year. That was before Donald Trump was elected American president.

Things have deteriorated by an order of magnitude since. Worst case scenarios, buried in the appendices of climate modelling data, are now being floated by American financial institutions as the future our children will face.

Trump has famously pretended that climate change is a “hoax”, attacked green energy innovation and pledged to max out fossil fuel production. Now he’s rumoured to be planning to rewrite the US government’s official position that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare to elevate the views of climate sceptics, ignore an avalanche of peer-reviewed scientific data and downplay the negative impacts (some fear he might even try and frame climate change as a net positive).

Devastating wildfires, droughts, floods, worsening air quality and asthma, deadly heatwaves and more mosquito-borne disease. Welcome to Trump’s America.

Read more by Rebecca McQuillan

Truth in the Trump administration has long since gone the way of the 1.5-degree target, lying at the bottom of the Potomac with concrete boots on. He has made knee-jerk self-interest and contempt for wider social........

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