Noam Chomsky: Trump's denial of climate change represents a worse threat to humanity than Hitler

Renowned linguist and media critic Noam Chomsky is watching the world approach the US elections, whose outcome he believes could push the planet into environmental disaster.

Perhaps not surprisingly, as the chief correspondent for The Independent in the United States says, Chomsky has stark words about President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, which he says is the only conservative political grouping in the world to deny the existence of climate change.

In an interview with the newspaper promoting a new book on the urgency of the crisis and a way to transition to a non-fossil fuel economy as part of the so-called Green New Global Deal, Chomsky said he had identified several patterns along the course of Trump's presidency.

The first is to tear up any deals in which he played no role in their creation, such as the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to curb the warning of the planet, which Barack Obama helped broker, but Trump pulled the United States out of it.

The reporter pointed to a controversial comparison Chomsky made between Trump and Adolf Hitler that his denial of climate change represented a worse threat to humanity than Hitler.

Chomsky, now 91, insists that the climate threat posed by global warming is unprecedented. "The facts are clear. There is a near-universal consensus among prominent scientists that we are heading towards disaster if current trends continue," he says.

"By the end of this century, we may have reached the third level, maybe 4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Every analysis concludes that this is a complete disaster. Organized human societies. Nothing will remain."

"We are heading towards disaster. There is one country in the world, the United States, that wants to put its foot on the gas pedal," Chomsky said.

When asked about the specific role that President Trump and the Republican Party are playing, he said that the global Coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than a million people and infected more than 43 million, can be treated, but not with a "malignant cancer in charge of politics. A person moves to destroy anything." It does not improve his electoral chances. "

"Definitely the worst person I can think of in history is Adolf Hitler. He was very ugly, but he was not trying to destroy the organized human community on earth."

"Definitely the worst person I can think of in history is Hitler. He was very ugly, but he was not trying to destroy the organized human society on earth," he added.

In response to a direct question whether Trump, the 73-year-old, was worse than Hitler, Chomsky said, "This is a very outrageous statement. Every time I say it, I make it to him by saying: This is a very outrageous statement, but please ask yourself if it is true."

The reporter pointed out that Chomsky compared the moment of the Holocaust genocide to the 2018 statement issued by the National Republican Highway Safety Administration, which concluded that there is no need for new restrictions on vehicle emissions because it estimated that global temperature will rise 4% by the end of the century.

As such, the Trump administration has concluded that it is pointless to impose new emissions standards, given that it has been one of the many contributors to global warming.

The report's authors write that halting the required rise in greenhouse gas emissions "will require the economy and fleet of vehicles (in the United States) to move significantly away from the use of fossil fuels, which is currently not technically or practically economically viable."

"(They say) so we're heading toward disaster, let's go faster because that will mean more profits for my constituency and the researchers who are funding me. Can you think of a document like the one in history,” Chomsky commented.

The reporter hinted that Chomsky recently caused some controversy when he said that 2020 was not a year for the protest vote, and said that Joe Biden, although imperfect from a progressive perspective, was the only viable option.

“Every two years something comes up called an election. You spend a few minutes deciding whether it is worth taking some time to participate, and sometimes it's so transparent that it shouldn't take 5 seconds when you have a malignant cancer racing to destroy the world, and the alternative is a program that is not,” Chomsky concluded. Wonderful, but at least it is open to improvement. A rational person doesn't spend 5 seconds on this decision. "