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00:00To discuss, I'm pleased to be joined now on the programme by Robert Proctor. He is a science
00:05historian at Stanford University. Hello to you and thanks for joining us.
00:10Thank you, Nadia.
00:12Look, back in 2016, when Trump first won the US presidency, you wrote that
00:19about climate change in the age of ignorance. I wonder then, with Trump back imposing all of
00:26these sweeping changes, how do you view that age of ignorance today?
00:31Well, I think it's much more insidious, much more powerful. We're in the age much more of
00:37social media and global strongmen. And so you've got a kind of ignorance from above through these
00:44strongmen, people like Trump, and you've got ignorance from below, from social media. And
00:50Trump, in particular, on climate, he loves oil. He loves what he calls clean coal,
00:56even has declared his love for plastics. And America is already the leading producer of
01:05petrochemicals. And it's going to get worse. He's curbing many of our legal agreements.
01:13He's punishing universities by increasing their costs and he's firing. He's been firing thousands
01:21of scientists in a kind of blitzkrieg against everything we know about climate up to this point.
01:29Look, though, back when he was first in power, Trump was pretty aggressive then on climate as
01:35well, wasn't he? Pulled the US out of the Paris 2015 climate deal the first time around as well.
01:40So is he more aggressive this time, more efficient, more dangerous? How would you
01:46characterize it? All of those things. Yeah. He now has all branches of government. He has the
01:53Congress. He has the Senate. He essentially has the Supreme Court. And he's got a bunch of compliant
02:01Republicans in the majority. So he also has much more experience and he's much more lawyered up
02:10and he's got Project 2025 behind him. And so he is moving at a much faster pace with much less
02:18resistance. And look, you mentioned Donald Trump's love apparently for plastic. And one of his more
02:25headline grabbing announcements is that the United States will bring back plastic straws.
02:30Let's just perhaps listen to what it is that Trump had to say about that.
02:34These things don't work. I've had many times and on occasion they break, they explode. If
02:41something's hot, they don't last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds.
02:47It's a ridiculous situation. So we're going back to plastic straws. And I don't think that
02:53plastic is going to affect a shark very much as they're eating, as they're munching their way
02:58through the ocean. And look, Mr. Perrotta, you can hear the kind of chuckles in the room there
03:05when he's making that announcement. It's not the most coherently explained idea by the US president.
03:11But I wonder sort of behind the way that he talks about it, is there something, I don't know,
03:18thought out, even sort of malicious in the way that Donald Trump uses this kind of simple language
03:24to get to something that is actually quite dark and quite dangerous?
03:28Of course, that's his appeal. He's always talking about common sense. He says he knows
03:36better than anyone. People credit him with telling it how it is. He's a very
03:43calculatedly, uncalculated political figure. And so he has this appeal, which has done an end run
03:52really, around the scientific establishment.
04:00And let's talk about maybe global warming specifically, because look,
04:05whether Donald Trump believes that global warming is real or not remains an open question. But what
04:10we do know is that there are more and more Americans who are deeply sceptical or perhaps
04:15who even outright deny that climate change is a reality. And look, you mentioned social media a
04:21bit earlier on. So I wonder, how much of this sort of distrust when it comes to the climate crisis,
04:30can we attribute to Donald Trump himself? And how much can we attribute to these kind of wider
04:36factors? You touched on a few of them earlier, social media, being one of them, a declining
04:41trust in institutions, not just in the United States, but in other countries as well.
04:46Well, remember, he has allies now in social media. And so in a sense, he is powering a lot of the
04:54social media from below through his Truth Social, through his alliance with Elon Musk, the world's
05:00richest man, the owner of X, now Twitter. And so he's able to marshal these forces more effectively.
05:09And look, he's also able to exploit some poverty of communication, you might say, among scientists
05:17when scientists talk about one and a half or two degrees centigrade warming. Trump will point out,
05:23well, it's two degrees warmer in my living room than my bathroom. So what's the big deal?
05:30So he's a master of trivialisation and a master of exploiting the poverty of the communication
05:40skills of many scientists. And as you say, then, it's not simply that Trump is implementing these
05:46policies that are bad for the planet. He's using his language to sow disinformation about climate
05:54change. And I suppose the big question for an individual like you, for the scientific community,
05:59more broadly is, look, how do you fight that? Yeah, well, it's going to be hard. The resistance
06:06is taking shape, but it's going to be slow. We're likely to see some of the most powerful resistance
06:12coming from the courts, because we're moving toward what many people consider a constitutional
06:19crisis when Trump is firing thousands of scientists from the Department of Energy,
06:25from the Environmental Protection Agency, from the National Institutes of Health. He's essentially
06:30usurping the role, the power of the purse that's supposed to be allocated to Congress.
06:36Congress has allocated these funds for research, and if he cuts them off, that could provoke a
06:43constitutional crisis. And the courts may have to decide whether he's allowed to do what he's doing.
06:50But then if Trump violates the court's rulings, that'll put us in an entirely new
06:58constitutional realm. Just a final question for you on RFK, who has now been confirmed as Trump's
07:08new Secretary of Health, a vaccine sceptic on the record. What do you make of his appointment?
07:15Well, he is a real wildcard, because he comes from an environmental progressive background,
07:23and he admittedly has some odd ideas and some dangerous ideas about vaccines. But
07:29he also knows that prevention is more important than cure. And so what I would anticipate
07:35is him pushing for getting rid of sugar in schools, getting rid of a lot of chemicals
07:41in foods, and possibly even getting rid of the nicotine in cigarettes, which is already on the
07:48table at the Food and Drug Administration. So he is a real unknown, and could really make a
07:55substantial positive difference in the midst of all these other horrors.
08:01All right, a fascinating message. Thank you so much. Indeed,
08:03it's been a pleasure to speak to you today.
08:05Robert Proctor talking to us there from Stanford University.