UPDATE BELOW
Trump just put the United States in the same league as Syria and Nicaragua by pulling our country out of the Paris Climate Treaty Accord.
China, India, and European countries will now lead the world in solving the problems resulting from a warming planet. We are now in company with two third-world countries. Trump has degraded the US. And he did it purely for ideological reasons, and not for the reasons Trump announced today at his press briefing. His ill-informed base will love this, and that's all who embrace his foolish, childish middle finger to the rest of the planet.
The president is a liar, first and foremost. What he gave as his reasons for withdrawing from the agreement are lies. Nothing he says should be believed until proved otherwise.
Therefore, everything he said today was probably a lie.
Trump will make good on a campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement, officials say, breaking away from a global effort to reduce greenhouse gases. The decision followed an intense struggle within the administration over the fate of the agreement, with Ivanka Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and business leaders urging the president to remain a party to the accord, and conservatives such as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt calling for an exit.
Business leaders including Apple's Tim Cook and Tesla’s Elon Musk had also lobbied Trump, arguing that the Paris accord's "bottom-up" approach gave the U.S. latitude to adjust its targets and remain within the agreement.
The United States will join two other nations — Syria and Nicaragua — in the U.N. climate group that do not participate in the accord.
Happily, I live in Boston, Massachusetts, and our leaders (including our Republican governor) are enlightened people who deal in facts, not fiction.
UPDATE:
MIT officials: Trump misunderstood our climate research
via Daily Kos
New York Times:
Mr. Trump’s policies — the latest of which was his decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change — have dismayed America’s allies, defied the wishes of much of the American business community he pretends to help, threatened America’s competitiveness as well as job growth in crucial industries and squandered what was left of America’s claim to leadership on an issue of global importance.
Here’s Ryan Cooper’s analysis at The Week:
[U]nder Trump the United States has ceded whatever lingering threads of global leadership it had not already shredded by pointless wars of aggression and financial doomsday devices; we are now something of a pariah state. On climate change, it now falls to Europe, China, and India to corral this blundering, addled elephant of a nation, until our janky political machinery can eject Trump and the Republican Party from power.
Tampa Bay Times:
President Donald Trump undermined the nation's security and American leadership in the world with his announcement Thursday that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. The move amounts to a staggering abdication of this nation's responsibility for the warming climate, and it will encourage more countries and industries to ignore the impact of rising temperatures and seas on public health and safety. While Trump offered a vague commitment to re-enter talks to seek a more favorable deal, that is window-dressing a senseless decision, choosing to stand by his fanciful campaign promises to revive the coal industry rather than working with China and other polluters for the benefit of global health.
25 comments:
I am not supporting DJT but the voluntary Paris accord has no teeth. China and India can pollute all they want and the "world" can do nothing about it. Since the accord was signed China has had an increase in pollution and parts of India are uninhabitable.
Will pulling out of the accord help lower US production costs, of course not but it appears the US was the only industrial country adhering to it.
We do live in interesting times and I agree DJT is off the rails and we need Pence.
Trump has no idea what he just did or the backlash that awaits.
If he's capable of regret, he'll regret leaving the Paris deal.
Then what I'm reading about China and India is all wrong, skud. They are moving to deploy renewables at a pretty brisk pace.They realize they have a problem.
Lord Dampnut talks about bringing back coal jobs but there are a couple problems:
1. Coal has become more expensive than alternatives.
2. There has been increased mechanization in the industry.
3. World and domestic demand is down.
Add them up and you see the jobs ain't coming back.
However, investment in renewables would bring good paying jobs.
So the rest of the world moves toward renewables and looks to China, Denmark and others as places to invest if they can't start up domestically. We lose out thanks to Lord Dampnut and the fringe right who still want a zero sum mercantile economy.
It was an asinine move by President Happy Hands. I think he spouted more lies in that speech than The Dauphin spouted announcing we were invading Iraq. Just plain asinine.
Skud... there's no agreement here. We don't want Pence either.
Anonymous, Trump will not regret backing out, he's never wrong in his own mind. But America will.
Robert Reich:
Other whoppers in Trump’s speech on withdrawing from the Paris accord:
1. "China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can't build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement."
False. Under the Paris agreement, each country publicly declares how much it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and what it will do to get there. In fact, China has actually taken steps to stop building coal plants. China has cut its use of coal three years in a row.
2. "Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree -- think of that; this much -- Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount."
Misleading. Tackling climate problems depends on taking a series of incremental steps to reduce carbon emissions. Pulling out of the Paris agreement would require even bigger future reductions.
3. "At 1 percent growth, renewable sources of energy can meet some of our domestic demand. But at 3 or 4 percent growth, which I expect, we need all forms of available American energy, or our country will be at grave risk of brownouts and blackouts."
Baloney. Economic growth stems from population growth and improvements in productivity. Neither of these factors will drive 3 percent or 4 percent growth in the U.S, regardless.
4. "India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020. Think of it. India can double their coal production. We're supposed to get rid of ours."
Rubbish. The Paris accord doesn’t even mention the word coal, nor does it do anything to put a global moratorium on coal. Each signatory sets its own goals and has to report on its progress. India has committed to reduce emissions 33 to 35 percent of 2005 levels by 2030.
We have a president who will say anything. Anything.
Know the facts. Spread the truth.
skud - "I am not supporting DJT but..."
Say what you want, but the reality is that you do support Trumps actions. You have on this blog over and over again. You just don't want to take responsibility for Trump. Sorry, but you don't get to play this game. You are a Trump Deplorable.
Trump's base that is 38% of the voting public are very happy with this, which goes to prove that Trump always appealed to the ill-informed and the misinformed. They're all celebrating their ignorance today.
Forget Trump.....How do you feel about the idea of having the GOVERNMENT provide a
GUARANTEED ANNUAL INCOME for every citizen –– and WHY do you feel as you do?
Trump or Pence? Yikes. That's like asking if you'd rather be killed or murdered.... No thanks to either of those single-cells.
Blueballs, I agree with you except it was Trump or -H-.
2c degrees by 2020 and it is voluntary which the US has to meet but China doesn't need to start complying until 2025. How is that a good deal except for the feel good crowd.
The market is dictating more efficient forms of energy, robots are replacing workers so job growth is difficult for unskilled workers and our politically corrupt politicians are investigating each other. I guess the driving consensus is lets take down DJT even if it brings down the country, a progressives dream.
Fatso, we have a government guaranteed income just not for everyone. It is called entitlements Welfare, food stamps, rent subsidies, cell phones, medicare, school lunch program, ADC, childcare. In the last 50+ years since LBJ's great society America has spent in excess of 20 trillion dollars to eliminate poverty and the percentage in poverty hasn't changed. That does not seem like a good investment.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, called the decision a "bizarre attempt to restore the past" in the New York Times:
It’s a stupid and reckless decision — our nation’s dumbest act since launching the war in Iraq. But it’s not stupid and reckless in the normal way. Instead, it amounts to a thorough repudiation of two of the civilizing forces on our planet: diplomacy and science. It undercuts our civilization’s chances of surviving global warming, but it also undercuts our civilization itself, since that civilization rests in large measure on those two forces.
Digby:
"[Trump] didn't have to do it. The Paris Accords were a public promise among 128 nations to work toward particular targets designed as much to give business, markets and governments some sense of how to plan for the future as it was to tackle the problem. There were no enforcement mechanisms simply the good will of all the countries that signed on to it. He's an infantile thinker and liar so he's either been manipulated or he's simply tying to wave his tiny hands around for his fans. It doesn't matter why.
Donald Trump has officially made the US, a gigantic polluter that was nonetheless leading efforts to change the trajectory of climate change, into a global environmental pariah.
And by the way, the media didn't ask even one climate change question during all those debates. Clinton had to try to sneak in her concerns where possible but nobody in the the press paid any attention. They did find the time to repeatedly grill her about her emails, however.
And, by the way, all these Republicans parading around high-fiving do know better. (At least most of them do.) They're just cowards and fools."
Skud, you obviously didn't read the link I put up on the information Trump cited in his incoherent speech yesterday.
Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100," [Trump] said. The White House attributed the claim to the MIT study, according to Reuters.
But MIT officials rejected that assertion, saying that, without the agreement, the temperature could rise more dramatically.
"If we don't do anything, we might shoot over 5 degrees or more and that would be catastrophic," John Reilly, the co-director of the university's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, told Reuters.
One of the study's authors Erwan Monier advised against the U.S. leaving the climate deal.
"We certainly do not support the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris agreement," Monier told Reuters.
Parroting a know-nothing Trump or his fellow Breitbard know-nothings isn't an argument. You and the rest of the far right wingers are essentially telling the world that you know more than climate scientists and that poor stupid America is going to fail bigly because of this voluntary agreement. Trump has told the world that we are a rogue nation, no longer a leader.
You and your tribe made fun of Obama because of his "lead from behind" foreign policy. Trump has changed that policy forever. Trump's policy is "Lead From Failure."
Trump is a miserable failure.
Wow! I remember the righties saying Obama was going to change America and that he's would make America lose respect all over the world. It's amazing to see that the guy they elected POTUS has done that very thing, Trump managed to make America NOT great, but like an outlaw country. It's amazing that such a minority could screw up America, but it did. And they're loving seeing America lose its leadership place in the world.
Good point Skud, Imagine if Hillary was president. We would all be personally doomed just by the rising cost of health insurance if nothing else. The U.S.A. would have instantly become a rogue state of robber baron polluters and MOAB bombers. Talk about dodging a bullet. I'm with you, buddy! I think that ditching NATO and partnering with Putin is a small price to pay indeed!
What's next? Chemical manufacturing plants that dump their raw waste materials directly into the great rivers of our continent? Wetlands converted into hog ponds? Strip mining in the National Parks? Clear cutting every ancient forest in the U.S.A? When does it stop?
Shaw,
Because we are pulling back from the Paris accord we are all of a sudden going to increase pollution. I don't think even the leftists believe that. It is not in any corporations best interest to increase pollution and they, like our politicians, will always act in their own best interest and being environmentally aware is just good business.
Could rise, might shoot over, is estimated or maybe not any of these. This is guessing not science. It was the same scientists who said Calif would be in a drought for a decade or longer and several years ago were predicting the next ice age. Staying in or dropping of the Paris accord has little to no impact on what countries do. It is the citizens pressuring or paying off their elected elite to make the laws and I doubt China will change. The Paris accord is a feel good give money away that we are paying for.
Instead of the feel good climate change why not call it something everyone can support, reduce pollution. Global warming has turned to climate change which is a feel good name. Pollution has such a bad sound to it but it is the truth.
If the Paris accord is so great and universally accepted by all nations why are there different time frames for nations to comply?
BTW Duck, I agree with you Coal is DOA.
Trump would not be the first president of the US to diminish America in the eyes of the world. The world is not doomed because America won't sign the Paris accords. When a sane Government gets back in power (and it will) progress will begin again on a cleaner Earth.
Again, Trump proves how dumb a business man he is. His other businesses end up in bankruptcy, or in court being sued. Future jobs are in the clean energy businesses. The fact that Trump can't see that, shows how stupid a businessman he is.
The right needs to smoke a joint and chill. If they did their heads may begin to see things a bit more clearly... Just sayin ☺
"Instead of the feel good climate change why not call it something everyone can support, reduce pollution. Global warming has turned to climate change which is a feel good name."
Shaw do you have a sign somewhere on your blog that i missed that says "Stupid People Can Comment Here?"
The comment above in quotes is about as dumb and ignorant statement as I've seen in the past months since Trump was elected and I've read hundreds of dumb statements from Trump's people.No wonder they love trump he speaks their language: Basic Dumb.
Agree 100% Clearwater!!
@RN - The right needs to smoke a joint and chill.
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No, a nice glass of chilled covfefe.
Max Boot a conservative nails it:
Follow
Max Boot ✔ @MaxBoot
For a lot of Trump's fans, liberal criticism means he made right decision on Paris agreement. Mindless oppositionism in lieu of reason.
Most of the comments I've read on far right blogs and news sites support Trump's decision to leave the Paris climate agreement simply because it infuriated liberals and the rest of the world. From what I've read, they don't know anything about the agreement except that President Obama was for it, and that's how they make decisions. If President Obama or any liberal is for it, they're against it.
IOW, they don't use their intellect, they use their prejudices and emotions. And Trump, being wholly ignorant on everything, except how to cheat people out of their money and how to sexually assault women, is their perfect leader.
Maz Boot labeled them perfectly: MINDLESS.
Duck... Covfefe and Rossi on the rocks, say yes!
This is what the people who voted for Trump were promised by Trump. They won the election. So get real, there is more of this garbage coming.
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