Once again demonstrating his utter contempt for the environment, science, and America's closest allies, the White House announced on Thursday that President Donald Trump will duck out of the G7 summit in Canada this weekend just in time to miss key sessions on the climate crisis and the health of the world's oceans.
"Trump's go-it-alone, extreme agenda has taken center stage at the summit," Sierra Club noted in a statement reacting to Trump's plan to depart the major gathering early.
"Aside from instilling terror in immigrant mothers, the Trump administration's greatest accomplishment has been dismantling climate and environmental protections."
—Brian Kahn, Earther
"Trump is the only world leader at the G7 who fails to grasp the basic science, and the urgent threat, of the climate crisis," added John Coequyt, Sierra Club's global climate policy director. "Too many elected Republican officials in the United States deny the science of climate change as a matter of political convenience, while Donald Trump remains completely beholden to fossil fuel moguls and is willing to ignore reality when it suits him."
As Earther's Brian Kahn notes, it is not exactly surprising that the U.S. president would want to skip meetings that will likely be filled with information on the importance of reducing carbon emissions, safeguarding Earth's oceans from pollution, and transitioning to green energy, given that his administration has pursued the precise opposite course during Trump's first year and a half in office.
"Aside from instilling terror in immigrant mothers, the Trump administration's greatest accomplishment has been dismantling climate and environmental protections," Kahn wrote on Friday. "The biggest international move the president has made so far was announcing his plan to pull out of the Paris Agreement just over a year ago... The administration has also proven no fan of ocean protection, advocating drilling the high seas anywhere there's oil to be potentially found."
Trump's decision to leave the high-profile G7 summit early comes as he continues to spar on social media with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron over his decision last week to hit Canada, the European Union, and Mexico with steel and aluminum tariffs—a move roundly denounced by progressives as "insane" and "reckless."
As Politico reported late Thursday, "Trump will be depart the summit in Quebec at 10:30am Saturday and head directly to Singapore, the site of his June 12 meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un."
Responding to Trump's continued Twitter barbs over Europe's trade policies, Macron wrote on Wednesday: "The American president may not mind being isolated, but neither do we mind signing a six-country agreement if need be."
