Hurricane Irma has swept through the Caribbean and the category 4 storm is now threatening Florida, with millions of people potentially affected. It’s called “Irma” because the World Meteorological Association makes an annual list of hurricane names, each starting with a different letter of the alphabet, and now we’ve made it to “I” this season. But now there’s a petition to drop the name and make a point about climate change by renaming the storm “Ivanka,” after the daughter of President Donald Trump.
Why Ivanka? It’s not just anti-Trumpism, it’s about Ivanka’s failed promise to influence her father on climate change, which has been linked to more intense hurricanes. Donald Trump has previously referred to climate change as a Chinese hoax scam and has appointed an EPA chief who denies there’s a link between CO2 and global warming. He also announced he would pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord, an agreement among 195 countries to fight climate change.
“Even Ivanka Trump, who promised to try to influence her father on certain issues like climate change, has quietly accepted the administration’s lack of action on this very serious issue. Ivanka Trump can say what she wants about climate change, but as long as she quietly stands back, she remains complicit in the destruction we all face at the hands of her father’s administration,” the petitioners wrote.
Nearly 11,000 people had signed the petition as of Friday morning. Neither Ivanka Trump nor the World Meteorological Association has responded.