Appearing on Thursday afternoon, CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir predicted that there will be "hell on Earth" if the world fails to prevent global warming, and declared that President-elect Donald Trump is telling the climate to "go to hell."
CNN News Central
November 7, 2024
2:53 p.m. Eastern
BORIS SANCHEZ: There is a wildfire raging in Southern California; a late-season hurricane tearing through Cuba and threatening the U.S. Gulf Coast; and also record autumn heat across the country. These are now just some of the realities of climate change. The question is: How will the U.S. respond to it under a second Trump administration.
BRIANNA KEILAR: Yeah, there's a new report that finds that 2024 is on track to be the warmest year ever. I know we're feeling that in Washington, D.C., today for sure, and it may cross a red line scientists are really worried about. CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir is here with more on this. Bill, 2024 will be the first calendar year to exceed the Paris agreement threshold. What does it mean for the planet?
BILL WEIR: Well, that line -- that 1.5-degree Celsius or three degrees Fahrenheit was the idea that anything beyond that would just be so hard to adapt and to do it in time. Once we hit two percent, if you think things are bad now, imagine the hell on Earth that would be three degrees of global warming. Well, Donald Trump is basically saying, "Go to hell -- go to that hell," because he doesn't want to even acknowledge the existence of the problem. He won with a promise to supercharge the economy and fix the border and heal America, but climate change is the hole in every one of those buckets, making it that much harder to deal with streams of immigrants coming from Central America after storms or droughts down there, dealing with the economy in places like Asheville, North Carolina, completely devastated.
We'll put up a map of the ocean temperatures as well, hitting records around the globe, especially around the United States -- the Atlantic and the Gulf there. That, of course, makes hurricanes stronger, faster. It moves water cycles in much less predictable ways. It effects everything from insurance rates -- there's a crisis on that -- to supply chains. And the wildfires that you're talking about now in California. These warm planet dries things out faster, makes a more flammable Earth. And so at the absolute time scientists saying that humanity must rally together, decarbonize as quick as humanely possible, and brace for the pain that's built in, the United States has really elected the most notorious climate denier in the public eye these days. Next week at COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the world is supposed to meet to talk about finance for developing countries, helping them adapt and get green in time. But we're already hearing diplomats may not be going because of the clues from the United States the Trump administration not interested. And certainly global climate diplomacy, for the countries that really take this seriously, that's a major issue. But there may be enough built-in momentum green energy projects, especially in Republican districts, Brianna and Boris, that it will be hard to claw those back here in the United States.
