President Donald Trump responded Wednesday to a radical speech from teen climate alarmist Greta Thunberg, suggesting the activist “focus” on nations with rising emissions instead of spending her time bashing the United States.
Trump said at a presser on Wednesday that he did not watch Thunberg’s speech, though he would have “loved to,” while challenging the teen to focus on entire continents and countries producing dramatically rising emissions.
“Some people put it at a level that is unrealistic, to a point that you can’t live your lives,” Trump explained. “We want to have the cleanest water on earth, we wanna have the cleanest air on earth. Our numbers, as you saw, we had record numbers come out very recently. Our [environmental] numbers are very, very good.”
“We have to do something about other continents, we have to do something about other countries,” POTUS continued. “When we’re clean and beautiful and everything is good, but you have another continent where the fumes are rising at levels that you can’t believe. I think Greta oughta focus on those places.”
“We are doing better right now than we’ve ever done in terms of cleanliness, in terms of numbers,” Trump emphasized.
“We have a beautiful ocean called the Pacific Ocean with thousands and thousands of tons of garbage flowing toward us, and that’s put there by other countries. And I think Greta has to focus on those other countries,” the president concluded.
As noted by The Daily Wire on Tuesday, Thunberg ripped President Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Climate Accord, despite the United States leading the world in CO2 emissions reductions, during her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“One year ago I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire,” Thunberg started her radical address. “I said I wanted you to panic. I’ve been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do. But don’t worry. It’s fine. Trust me, I’ve done this before, and I can assure you it doesn’t lead to anything.”
“The fact that the U.S.A. is leaving the Paris accord seems to outrage and worry everyone, and it should,” the teen continued. “But the fact that we’re all about to fail the commitments you signed up for in the Paris Agreement doesn’t seem to bother the people in power even the least.”
As noted by The Guardian, “greenhouse gas emissions have risen by 4%” since the Paris Accords were signed, while the U.S.’s emissions have dropped.
Thunberg typically avoids mentioning China when offering her screeds against world leaders on climate change, despite the nation leading in carbon emissions. Notably, the activist has also yet to visit China to give one of her lectures.
“With the world’s largest population and for decades one of the fastest growing economies, China is far and away the world’s top CO2 emitter,” USA Today reported this summer, using data collecting in 2017. “Close to 10,000 million metric tons of CO2 from burning fossil fuel were emitted by the superpower in 2017. On a per capita basis, China’s CO2 emissions of 7.1 metric tons per person trail that of most countries on this list but still rank in the top 50 worldwide.”
“Driving China’s CO2 emissions is the nation’s massive coal production,” the reported added. “China’s generation of electricity from coal has dropped slightly from 75% in 1992 to 70% in 2015. Still, overall coal production has tripled since 2000 to nearly 4,000 million metric tons – approximately half of all global coal production.”
WATCH:
Trump responds: “Greta should focus on those places” with bad pollution, rising emissions pic.twitter.com/Jq5bTxEXcw
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 22, 2020
Related: Facebook Glitch Reveals Father, Activist Behind Greta Thunberg’s Facebook Page. Greta Responds.