Donald Trump
Credit: Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is at a record high, Europe is in the midst of a hellish heat wave, and extreme weather is ravaging large swaths of the globe, but President Donald Trump dismissed the need for climate action during the G20 summit in Japan on Saturday and falsely claimed that air and water in the U.S. are the “cleanest” they have ever been.

Trump told reporters during a press conference Saturday morning that he is not ignoring the threat of the climate crisis, but he doesn’t want to take action to confront the emergency because such a move would threaten corporate profits.

“So we have the best numbers that we’ve ever had recently,” Trump said. “I’m not looking to put our companies out of business.”

“I’m not looking to create a standard that is so high that we’re going to lose 20-25 percent of our production. I’m not willing to do that,” Trump continued. “We have the cleanest water we’ve ever had, we have the cleanest air—you saw the reports come out recently. We have […]