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While Donald Trump is declaring that “someday” he deserves to be added to Mount Rushmore, an environmental group moved by his musings such as climate change being a Chinese hoax is planning an even cooler carving: his own Mount Trumpmore on an Arctic glacier now rather than later.
“We want to make his dream come true,” a title card on a video promoting the proposal dubbed “Project Trumpmore” states before it fades out and is replaced by one adding “Kinda.”
Svalbard is among the locations being considered by the Finnish group Melting Ice for a 115-foot-high (the same size as the Mount Rushmore carvings) ice sculpture of Trump’s face so they can watch it melt to gauge the impacts of climate change.
“There are still people who ponder whether it’s a real issue,” Nicolas Prieto, the chairman of the association Melting Ice, said in a prepared statement. “We want to build the monument for all of us, so we can see how long the sculpture lasts before melting. Often people only believe something when they see it with their own eyes.”
The project’s website doesn’t take any direct potshots at Trump, but the promotional video notes various comments he’s made declaring climate change a hoax as well as policies such as pulling out of the Paris climate treaty and gutting numerous environmental regulations. Organizers are trying to raise about 500,000 U.S. dollars for the project and are so far pinpointing six possible sites (others are in Canada, Greenland and Iceland) with the plan of selecting a glacier “where the effect of global warming is said to be its most concrete.”
“The execution of the project will be carried out by a world-leading team of Finnish and Mongolian ice sculptors,” the project’s website notes. “Estimated building will take four weeks and the process will be documented and broadcast via a live feed.”
The subject melting of the glacier would also be livesteamed.
Reaction to the idea on global social media was as divided as all things Trump, albeit nearly all negative against him or the group behind the project. The latter were the targets of typical comments for such campaigns, such as much money and fossil fuels they’ll waste (the organization asserts “we’re working hard to minimize all our C02 emissions caused by traveling and other actions related to the project”).
Locally, however, a totally unscientific Facebook poll suggested nearly universal opposition to carving the commander-in-chief here.
One positive (“awesome idea”), was countered by a multitude of negatives (“this is really f*cking stupid,” “keep the moron in chief out of Svalbard,” “anything other than his face please). And there were several references to the size-obsessed Trump’s traits (“no iceberg on Svalbard is big enough for his ego,” “they could sculpt his hands, I’ve heard they’re pretty small”).
