More on Trump and the Climate Accord
A reader asks: Craig, have you read the entire Paris Climate Accord document? I did! ….. It’s incredibly vague…. Why not step away from just spending money and maybe just maybe renegotiate the terms?
No, I haven’t read it myself, though I’ve read the interpretations of numerous people who helped forge it. In any case, I understand that it’s vague, and that conformity with any amount of specific emission reduction is voluntary.
The reason that it won’t be negotiated is that, depending on how you count it, the world has taken 20 years to get to this point, through intense negotiations requiring millions of man-hours. Yes, the new U.S. president suggests discarding all that work because he boasts that he can cut a better deal. The rest of the world is laughing at the idea, and is perfectly happy for the U.S. to go away, carrying their scorn along with it.
There are really only a few important things about Trump’s decision:
a) It will have little effect on the climate, since most of what happens in the U.S. vis-a-vis sustainability occurs in corporations and at the level of state and local government.
b) The real effect of the decision to gratuitously and deliberately alienate U.S. allies all over the world is to reduce foreign cooperation with the U.S. on other matters in the future, and
c) Galvanizing the base is critical at this time when support for Trump continues to erode at an accelerating pace, and this support will be vitally important once things heat up with the Justice Department and Flynn/Kushner/Comey/etc. The base LOVES to see Trump piss off the rest of the world, as they presume (wrongly) that by doing so, he’s standing up for their jobs in coal mines, rust-belt factories, etc.
Craig,
Please don’t get all cranky when I ask you to step back for a moment, and think about what you just wrote.
How you would love to deride and mock the President, if he admitted not having actually read a document he passionately defended!
Yet, here you are admitting the same thing. Can’t you glimpse the irony?
( You remind me of those faithful, whose knowledge of Christianity is derived by listening to a preacher, but never felt the need to read the Bible.)
Let me assure you, the US doesn’t have ” allies all over the world”, the few allies the does possess, will not be alienated, in fact they couldn’t give a damn.
The wish to renegotiate or withdraw from the Paris Accord (not a treaty) was always part of Trump’s election campaign. Attributing any other significance is illogical.
Perhaps if you read the full text of the Paris Accord objectively, you might be shaking your head and wondering if President Obama was really so naive as to sign such an absurd document. Although, on reflection, Obama was probably one of the few signatories who didn’t cynically sign for political expediency or advantage.
Craig, I’m afraid you view of world leaders acting from high moral virtue and altruistic world diplomacy, only exists in Walt Disney films or Readers Digest !
Some are better than others, but essentially they’re all politicians.
For more nearly 100 hundred years, the world has needed the US, more than the US needed the world.
Why is it that you can be so compassionate about the poor in some foreign nation, yet completely ignore the plight of so many Americans living in despair and third world poverty, in your own back yard.
These folk don’t want “conscience welfare” they want meaningful employment. They want their President to care about them, not the applause of the chattering classes of foreign nations!
I dare say the good folk in Tallulah, Madison Parish, Louisiana, where more than 1 in 3 live below they poverty line, or the citizens of Akron, Ohio where nearly 1 in 3 live below the poverty line, would love to see the difference an annual investment of $3 billion of Federal money would make to their community.
With 23 trillion debt, the US doesn’t need to waste money gaining the applause of Eurocrats, and others who never like US, regardless.
Craig,
Here’s an after-thought.
If we put aside the controversy surrounding GW/CC (yes, I know the ‘science’ is irrefutable and alarming etc, but it would seem the general public are not so convinced, or at least not so alarmed), that still leaves the issue of pollution.
I was very impressed when John Kerry took his PRC counterpart to Lunch in Boston and explained how the US cleaned up the harbour. Suddenly the PRC Party boss could see the advantages of such a project.
I suspect the average individual would be far more supportive of cleaning up visible pollution along with the jobs that creates than less understandable climate change theories.
Without wishing to argue,I really don’t believe the majority of folks are worried about rising sea levels. Beach front properties still command premium prices, and despite endless alarmist predictions, there’s no evidence of any oceanic increase.
I would suggest by concentrating on the economic and viable benefits of reducing unsightly pollution, restoring degraded land and a government sponsored clean up of urban blight and pollution, not only would the economy be boosted, but a subtle process of environmental education would occur.
Suddenly clean tech and environmental practices would be owned by the vast majority of citizens, who could support not only ” Making America Great Again” but ” Making America Beautiful Again”.
Lecturing Joe Public about GW/CC and demanding he pay to change his life style, certainly hasn’t proved successful, but encouraging employment to revitalize his city, getting rid of pollution,and real beautification projects, is a different matter,
Joe Public will not only support such projects, but join in. With a new sense of pride in his local community, he may start to have more sympathy for larger scale projects.
Even the rich, wouldn’t mind funding such projects.
Just a thought……
There is no doubt that the common American is much more aware of and concerned by gray-brown air and lead-poisoned water than about a climate change, unfolding, as it is, over many decades. Having said that, Trump supporters are thrilled that the EPA budget has been cut by 31%, which will most assuredly mean more air and water pollution. It’s a bizarre time in the good ol’ USA.
Craig,
While I support the principles and necessity of agencies like the EPA, these agencies must still be held accountable for how they spend Taxpayer funding.
Like many other government agencies, the US EPA had grown under previous administrations to include very expensive programs and manpower, not always associated with the purpose or efficiency of it’s mission.
It’s easy to just condemn the new administration, but since many of these savings were identified by independent government agencies, it might be a good idea to examine how the cuts with affect the operation of the EPA before automatically condemning budget reductions.
In a previous comment, I identified more than two billion dollars of unnecessary, inexplicable and wasteful expenditure by the EPA none of which was relevant to it’s primary mission.
The EPA is also guilty of bureaucratic empire building, often duplicating or failing to cooperating the facilities of other agencies.
I understand the automatic assumption that because these cuts have been ordered by the the Trump administration, they quite rightly be viewed with suspicion, especially by congress.
However, if the cuts are indeed justified, the EPA is a government agency and certainly not beyond audit and scrutiny.
Don’t you agree ?