GREEN PARTY LEADER Roderic O’Gorman has “acknowledged” the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election, while insisting that the result cannot be allowed to compromise progress on addressing the climate crisis. 

“A core function of any democracy is respect for the outcome, and so I acknowledge the vote of the American people for Donald Trump as their President,” O’Gorman said in a statement. 

He said he has “no doubt” that Ireland will maintain a close relationship with the United States but added, “We cannot let this result undermine the significant progress that is being made in many countries such as Ireland to tackle the devastating impact of climate change”.

“I would also like to extend my solidarity and support to the women in America whose reproductive rights have been curtailed in recent years, and for whom this result brings great uncertainty,” O’Gorman said in reference to Republican’s stance on abortion. 

Two days ago, O’Gorman said that another Trump presidency would be “a disaster” because of the Republican’s repeated promise to “drill, baby, drill”. 

“It will also be a disaster because US backsliding on commitments will discourage other countries from cutting emissions,” O’Gorman said. 

US oil production has reached record levels under the Biden administration but Trump has promised even more. 

Trump has called climate change “a hoax” and green policies and regulations “a scam”.

In July this year, Trump said the Biden administration “spent trillions of dollars on things, having to do with the green new scam, that’s a scam, and that’s caused tremendous inflationary prices, in addition to the cost of energy”. 

While he was in office, Trump reversed course on almost 100 US climate change policies. 

He also withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, a treaty on tackling climate change that had been signed by his predecessor Barack Obama.