Trump Saves the World!

Polling data indicate that there remain millions of Americans who believe Donald J. Trump is on track to do just that. For millions of others, though, even when Trump misgivings are brushed aside, it remains preposterous that one person’s efforts—or lack thereof—could tip the scale enough to dramatically alter the fate of this planet. Besides, who says the world needs saving anyway? Perhaps even more outlandish is the possibility that a majority might somehow agree on a fix—especially Trump’s—if indeed one is needed. Even so, in ways both unexpected and ironic, Former-President Trump may have contributed directly to a sped-up solution to our world’s pressing problems.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a warning (2019) that to save ourselves, the human race must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This will require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. Many readers may be encouraged presently by pockets of rapid response to this dire warning. Conversely, others, who are yet to take climate change seriously, are delighted when leaders dismiss the IPCC message. Many others are alarmed that smokestacks and tailpipes may instead be increasing their spew.

We humans generally consider ourselves to be the highest of life forms. However, the IPCC warning implies that if we don’t make immediate and drastic changes, we are likely to become evolution’s biggest blunder. With embarrassment, we soon may be asking: instead of nature’s culmination, aren’t we nature’s now-lethal, fallen favorite? And, “made in God’s image” may fall from tomorrow’s vernacular as our self-first exploitations and environmental disruption are exposed as anything but godlike. 

I grew up in a community where most people believed in an apocalyptic righting called The Second Coming of Jesus Christ. To this day, many, in fact, speak of this event as immanent. The Second Coming will be an intervention by God, they insist. Therefore, we need not concern ourselves with a supposed and coincidental climate crisis. A common sentiment I hear is that only an arrogant heretic would speak of man as being capable of causing changes to God’s handiwork. Others, however, see, instead, Earth as a finite system of interrelated ecosystems, of which, we are only a part. Like mold in a Petri dish, the IPCC panel of scientists warns, there are limits to growth, and dire consequences for violating the laws of our being—whether or not there’s a God in charge.

Believers in a Second Coming envision an approaching dawn of a human race wiped-clean of greed. Souls who are saved during this messianic intervention will be lovers, not haters. Members of other belief systems dismiss the entire notion. In either case, what may be overlooked is that the survivors in the wake of a human-caused apocalypse may be quite similar to a post-Second Coming human race. 

Granted, the post-Second-Coming survivors will be the “righteous,” which is quite different from post-climate-crisis humans, who, instead, will have had both luck and shrewd adaptability on their side. But it appears to me that with either scenario, the survivors will awaken to a common fate—the world as they knew it is only a faint memory.

I hear present-day believers in a Second Coming paraphrase a line from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s indelible poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, as they shrug, “[mine] is not to reason why.” But others among us soul search these days regarding what save-the-world might mean. They/we ask: Saved from what? Assuming there is a crisis, is it due to a natural evolutionary process and/or God’s plan? Would God or gods intervene, given we may yet have the capability to save ourselves? Is there still time to avoid the most dire of consequences? Is “life as we know it” sustainable? If not, why fuss? 

The IPCC says saving the world will require swift action. Our global response must be so colossal that the reduction in fossil fuel consumption each year will be near 10%—down by at least 50% by 2030; a comparable change in farming and ranching practices for sequestering carbon into soil; and many other Herculean adaptations. It may be argued that at least once before—during WWII—there was such a mobilization, albeit on a national, not global scale. Assuredly, with leadership as acute as FDR’s, we could do it again. If they have what it takes, perhaps today’s leaders truly have the opportunity to save the world. 

If, instead, they and we fail, well, it might be due to continued denial beyond a point of no return. In which case, Trump and other leaders may be remembered as saviors of a different sort. Sadly, the saving will be due to humans having squandered an opportunity and therefore, with only relatively few human survivors having only a fractional “footprint,” other creatures and their ecosystems may rebound. Thus, ushered in would be a Second Coming of an unanticipated nature. Surviving humans may someday marvel that the resulting reboot for our species has been much like what had been anticipated through the ages by believers of a Second Coming, and remember Donald Trump as having been instrumental in saving the world…from us.