Could Trump become responsible for more deaths than Hitler?

A recent article on how even during the July 2023 heat wave the US republican party was still falling in line with Donald Trump and rallying against climate action because those wanting action were silenced by the support for Trump.

The result is the world’s largest economy and one of the most powerful forces in global politics sends mixed signals on climate change and every US company has to keep contingency plans in place for a possible Trump government.

Climate action in not just the USA, but the whole world, is compromised as a result of the stance by Trump.

There was a recent estimate that accelerated action on climate change could save 74 million lives, which means failure to take that action could cost a comparable number of lives to WWII, but while the numbers for WWII are history, the number of lives lost through a reduction in action on climate change are just predictions which, could be lower or if climate change exceeds those 2021 projections, could be far, far higher.

While it is just speculation, there is the potential for Trump to end up causing more loss of life.

Trump alone could be dividing the US on climate action.

Even as more Republican politicians are joining the consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has driven the party to the right on climate and extreme weather. Trump has called the extremely settled science of climate change a “hoax” and more recently suggested that the impacts of it “may affect us in 300 years.”

Why Republicans can’t get out of their climate bind, even as extreme heat overwhelms the US

It could be argued that if it was not for Trump someone else could have emerged as the flag bearer for “anti-climate”, but that does not mean they would have necessarily gained the same traction, and the same argument could be applied for Hitler his “anti” stances.

Could weakened global climate action cause more deaths than WWII?

World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the 2.3 billion (est.) people on Earth in 1940.

World War II casualties

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions quickly would save tens of millions of lives worldwide, a new study finds. It’s the latest indication that climate change is deadly to humans, and that the benefits of transitioning to a cleaner economy could be profound.

Cutting Carbon Pollution Quickly Would Save About 74 Million Lives, Study Finds

Elements of a comparison.

The question of intent.

Superficially, Hitler was more “evil” as he intended holocaust victims to die, but following the innocent child assumption would suggest he had become damaged individual who in his deluded mind passionately believed he was doing the right thing.

It is less clear that Trump acts on the basis of any conviction as opposed to just the pure pursuit of power for his own glory, as was the case with events of January 6th 2020.

Wars: Trump has not been a warmonger.

I have already heard Trump proclaimed a keeper of the peace, with a declaration that with Trump gone, America will end up in new wars. I wanted to check the claim “Trump is the first President since Jimmy Carter to not initiate any wars”.

See this article here, which rebuts the claim that Trump had the first four year term since Eisenhower without a war. That article does however agree that Trump is the first president since Carter to not bring the US into a new war.

Since Carter there have been (year term started):

• Ronald Regan (1981,1985)
  • Grenada 1983
  • Lebanon 1983
• George H.W. Bush (1989)
  • Gulf War 1991 – Operation Desert Storm
• Bill Clinton (1993, 1997)
  • Bosnian Intervention 1995
  • Kosovo 1998
• George W. Bush (2001,2005)
  • Afghanistan 2001
  • Iraq War 2003
• Barack Obama (2009,2013)
  • United States and the Libyan Civil War in 2011
• Donald Trump (2017)
  • …. nothing – despite provocation

Trump is the first president since Carter to not bring the US into a new military action during their first term. Note this is not because there was no situation that could have resulted in US involvement, specifically there were the following:

• North Korea
  • The Initial Trump ‘Rocket Man’ speech 2017
    • Trump suggests he may “totally destroy” North Korea
    • 2017-2018 North Korea crisis follows
    • Korea marches as one in Winter Games February 2018
    • Talks between Trump and his ‘friend Kim’
      1. Singapore on 12 June 2018
      2. Hanoi, Vietnam on 27–28 February 2019
      3. Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on 30 June 2019
• Iran
  • Iran shoots down American drone (June 19, 2019)
  • Trump intervened and aborted US military response
  • Trump tweets he was in “no hurry” to attack Iran and halted his order “10 minutes before the strike” because it was only then that he learned that Iranian casualties were estimated to be 150 killed, which he said was “not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone

This is not an endorsement of the responses to potential conflict by Trump, but it is an observation that Trump has sought to take steps to avoid escalating conflicts, regardless of whether those steps are to be regarded as successful. In time people will judge whether the situations were left diffused, or as powder kegs, and there will probably be no objective answer. Factchecking the claim of no wars under Trump as a first since Carter: True. Whatever faults Trump may have, being a ‘warmonger’ does not appear to one of them.

Updates:

At this stage this page is just a “news/seeds” page but will serve as a place to pin any further updates

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