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Totally freaked out is the best way I can explain how I'm feeling right now knowing Donald Trump has won the presidency. Yes, the billionaire television personality who denies climate change, has ties to the Dakota Access Pipeline, and has promised to "renegotiate" the Paris agreement and completely dismantle the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will be the next President of the United States!
My email inbox is stuffed full with reactions from the environmental community and Twitter is on fire. Here are some of those reactions:
"Our hearts go out today to the millions of people who voted against bigotry and hate and now have to accept the fact that the man who ridiculed and threatened them for months is the President-elect of the United States," Greenpeace USA's Executive Director Annie Leonard shared. "Fear may have won this election, but bravery, hope and perseverance will overcome.
Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, chimed in with good advice last night with this tweet:
"Trump's election is a disaster, but we must channel our anger and fear into hope and resolve," said May Boeve, 350 Action's executive director. "Our work becomes much harder now, but it's not impossible, and we refuse to give up. Together, we will put everything on the line to protect the progress we've made and continue to push for bold action. We refuse to leave the future of our climate in Trump's hands. Now is the time to take a deep breath and fight like never before."
Renowned climate scientist Michael Mann sums it up perfectly:
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, had this to say even before the final numbers were in:
Gary Wockner, a Colorado-based environmental activist and former Democratic Party campaign manager, blames the Democratic Party for Trump's win.
"This election is a sharp and dramatic repudiation of mainstream Democratic and environmental politics, which supported every anti-environmental whim of Hillary Clinton and aggressively undermined the candidacy of Bernie Sanders," Wockner said. "We now have a historic wake-up call and opportunity to recapture American environmentalism as the voice of the people, not of corporate Democratic Party power."
As far as the Paris agreement goes, Jean Su of the Center for Biological Diversity said, "The Paris agreement was signed and ratified not by a president, but by the United States itself. One man alone, especially in the twenty-first century, should not strip the globe of the climate progress that it has made and should continue to make. As a matter of international law, and as a matter of human survival, the nations of the world can, must and will hold the United States to its climate commitments. And it's incumbent upon U.S. communities to unite and push forth progressive climate policies on a state and local level, where federal policy does not reign."
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