Trump Administration Celebrates The Climate Crisis

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo celebrated the climate crisis during the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting, stating, “Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade.” Last week, the Trump administration tried to remove any mention of climate change from the Arctic Council’s declaration, and when asked on Sunday about how he would rank the climate crisis among national security threats, Pompeo reportedly said, “I can’t rank it.”

After Pompeo’s confirmation as Secretary of State last year, it was revealed that his ties to multinational oil and gas companies was even more pervasive than initially reported.

Pompeo’s comments follow on a slew of reports on the dangers of the climate crisis, including the release of a new UN report this morning that found that human activity is putting one million species at risk of extinction within decades; the U.S. Department of Defense warning that the climate crisis is a national security issue and, if it continues unchecked, threatens both coastal and inland military bases; and Trump’s own EPA finding that the climate crisis will cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars each year by the end of the century.

In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune released the following statement:

“Mike Pompeo’s willfully ignorant and dangerous remarks on the climate crisis are just the latest example of Donald Trump and his administration burying their heads in the sand and needlessly putting American lives at risk. The climate crisis is not a business opportunity for the oil and gas industry to exploit at the expense of the American people, and the world deserves leaders who take national security threats seriously.”