'Get Your Mops & Buckets Ready!' — Trump's Infuriating Answer To Rising Seas

The US president slammed a sea wall proposal for New York while planning an ocean barrier for his Irish golf resort amid global warming.
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Donald Trump has offered a definitively low-tech – and maddening – ‘solution’ to rising sea levels amid global warming: “Get your mops and buckets ready!”

He came up with the snide, unhelpful suggestion in a tweet as he criticised ongoing discussions about the possibility of constructing a sea wall to protect New York City, where low-lying areas have already experienced increased flooding from the encroaching ocean. The president called it an “environmentally unfriendly idea” that will “look terrible”.

A massive 200 Billion Dollar Sea Wall, built around New York to protect it from rare storms, is a costly, foolish & environmentally unfriendly idea that, when needed, probably won’t work anyway. It will also look terrible. Sorry, you’ll just have to get your mops & buckets ready!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2020

The proposal by the Army Corps of Engineers for New York would create a six-mile-long barrier of man-made islands with retractable gates. The cost would not be $200b (£153.6b), as Trump falsely claimed, but $119b (£91.4b), and it would be constructed over 25 years. A finalised proposal isn’t expected to be presented to Congress until at least 2022. Some experts fear the massive proposal is already too little too late.

Critics were absolutely gobsmacked by Trump’s mocking comeback — particularly because the president has his own “environmentally unfriendly” wall that “looks terrible.” The “environmentally unfriendly” president has also won approval to construct two sea walls at his Turnberry golf resort in Ireland to keep the ocean at bay amid climate change, which Trump has called a “hoax,” but now says is “serious.”

Imagine being this proud of being this ignorant.

— Angela Belcamino (@AngelaBelcamino) January 18, 2020

What if we get Mexico to pay for it?

— Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) January 18, 2020

I'll leave this here for no reason. pic.twitter.com/V78SgZGjS3

— Chidi®️ (@ChidiNwatu) January 18, 2020

A massive 200 billion dollar sea wall may not even be enough to protect New York residents from massive storms like Sandy and the tragic reality of climate change and rising sea levels. If Trump thinks a sea wall is environmentally unfriendly, climate change is truly apocalyptic.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) January 18, 2020

Shorter: Trump admits wall won't work.

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) January 18, 2020

What will mops and buckets do when you are under 10 feet of water? You haven’t thought this through, have you? Glad you will be in Florida, which also is under threat from a rising sea.

— mj caswell (@mjcaswell) January 19, 2020
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