Screenshot of Trump's tweet, where he called global warming a Chinese hoax.
Today, Monday, November 4, the Trump administration made it official: The United States formally notified the United Nations that our country will withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change. This was not much of a surprise, coming as it did from someone who used to refer to climate change as a “hoax” created by China—presumably, in President Trump’s mind, with the intent of stifling American manufacturing.
As President Trump told a cheering crowd at a natural gas conference last month: “They were taking away our wealth. It was almost as though it was meant to hurt the competitiveness—really, competitiveness of the United States. So, we did away with that one.”
(Never mind that none of it is true on any level: Climate change is no hoax, China is not involved, and dealing with one of the greatest threats to life on the planet is certainly not intended as some sort of con game to hurt this quarter’s US economic news.)
The bottom line is that Trump has had a vendetta against the Paris Agreement from the get go—and, in fact, a vendetta against anything to do with fighting global warming. Trump has trumped up all sorts of so-called facts to support his position, all of which were roundly disproved.
But it’s not as if we weren’t forewarned. Trump gave ample evidence on the campaign trail of what he intended to do, as can be seen from this 2016 New Yorker article by journalist Evan Osnos.
Titled “President Trump: What Would He Do?” the article told exactly what to expect for the next four years, and how bad it would be. The article seemed extraordinarily well-sourced, judging from this paragraph: “Over the summer, I interviewed several dozen people about what the United States could expect from Donald Trump’s first term. Campaign advisers shared his plans, his associates relayed conversations, and I consulted veterans of five Republican Administrations, along with economists, war gamers, historians, legal scholars, and political figures in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.”
Osnos sums it all up at the very end, saying that we cannot expect “that his presidency would be something other than the campaign that created it.”
But rather than despair, activists have been taking a line from a labor organizer of the early 1900s, named Joe Hill. According to lore, shortly before he was to be executed for a crime he did not commit, Hill sent a telegram to his supporters: “Don’t mourn. Organize.”
The Bulletin elevates expert voices above the noise. But as an independent, nonprofit media organization, our operations depend on the support of readers like you. Help us continue to deliver quality journalism that holds leaders accountable. Your support of our work at any level is important. In return, we promise our coverage will be understandable, influential, vigilant, solution-oriented, and fair-minded. Together we can make a difference.
View Comments
It is incredible that President Trump is pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement that was agreed to by all the 195 nations attending the climate conference. Besides being in denial, Trump and Republican politicians are, in effect, pouring oil on the raging fire, by doing all they can to eliminate or weaken legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
It is essential that Trump and other climate deniers be defeated in 2020.
Comparing Trump to a loose cannon is an understatement. His latest fumbling: irritating Denmark's government, a staunch geopolitical ally until not very long ago. Probably as a result of his shenanigans and uncouth moves towards that small country, Danes have finally realized that enough is enough and given the green light to Gazprom's Nordstream 2 last leg of pipeline crossing Danish waters. Meanwhile, the sky is quickly turning grey for frackers in the US: https://www.worldoil.com/news/2019/10/30/idled-frac-fleets-sold-for-scrap-amid-shale-drilling-slump.
I've just read the speech Trump gave that is mentioned here to the Natural Gas Conference last month. It's appallingly ignorant, but the worst of all - it goes on for over an hour. More than 60 minutes. Over 3600 seconds. A twenty-fourth of a day. At least Boris can't manage more than 5 mintues, 10 minutes tops...
The whole thing is misery on stilts. At a moment in time when we face so many critically important issues, we seem to have our least capable politicians around to cope with them.