generalspeaking

No 'Deals' Not Seen to Benefit the U.S.A.

"The Americans can't just get out of the [Paris climate aaccord] agreement. It takes three to four years [to pull out]. [And it is the] duty of Europe [to counter U.S. President Donald Trump]."
"[G7 leaders] tried to explain this in clear, simple sentences to Mr. Trump [at last week's summit in Italy]. It looks like that attempt failed ... the law is the law."
"Not everything that is written in international agreements is fake news."
Jean-Claude Juncker, president, European Commission

Ice is viewed near the coast of West Antarctica from a window of a NASA Operation IceBridge airplane on October 28, 2016. The cracks hint at how fragile the sheets really are. Photograph by Mario Tama, Getty

But there you have it. Donald J. Trump in his element, elephantine in status, among the rhinos in the jungle he inhabits. It's a rough, tough world out there, where diplomacy is wasted and it's every man and every nation for itself. A fallacy of great dimensions that nations and the men and women whose affairs they administer, are the least bit interested in the welfare of others'. Take his word for it, he knows, because it's a matter dear to his heart and reflective of how he does business; cut-throat and crude as all hell.

"We don't want other leaders and other countries laughing at us any more. And they won't be."
"The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and in many cases lax contributions to our critical military alliance."
"[My administration will begin negotiations either to re-enter the Paris accord or to have a new agreement] on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers."
"This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States."
"We're getting out. And we will start to renegotiate and we'll see if there's a better deal. If we can, great. If we can't, that's fine."
U.S. President Donald Trump

 

The European Union, alongside China has reaffirmed their Paris climate change accord commitment. And who might have imagined that while the U.S. administration has shocked its G7 partners, leaving 199 other nations as signatories to the Paris accord and itself abandoning it as though on an impulse of determined disagreeableness under the notion that the powerful U.S.A. will no longer agree to taking its place alongside other nations of the world in a joint effort to remediate the harm industry does to the environment, leaders of corporate interests disagree?

Rolling Hills, Iowa. Image: Brad Romano

Last-minute appeals aimed at this man taking upon himself the prerogative of his office to assume the position that China once took, reluctant to hinder its economic progress, have not moved him one iota from his chosen path. Trump's threat to remove the  United States from its support of the Paris accord saw Elon Musk threaten to abandon his appointment as adviser to the White House should the threatened withdrawal proceed, and it has.

This is one campaign promise that President Trump is proceeding with, among others mostly revolving around trade; he has made good on his grumbling resentment of other nations taking the United States for granted, milking it of opportunities, economic advancement, blue-collar employment, as though the nations of the world are on one side, weighing down the globe in their unequal plot to connive and to 'cheat' America of its greatness in a financial decline brought forward by friends acting as enemies.

Certainly if they were friends before the ascension of Donald Trump, the chance is now fairly good that they will become, if not exactly enemies, then most certainly guarded acquaintances.  Concerned scientists now fear that greenhouse gas emissions of up to three billion tons of carbon dioxide annually will enter the atmosphere, thanks to the U.S. drop-out; enough emissions to melt ice sheets, raise seas, and trigger more extreme weather conditions, on a shorter time-scale.

And while the largest emitter of carbon, China, remains committed to meeting its Paris accord targets primarily by cancelling construction of hundreds of coal-fired power plants, investing billions in wind and solar projects, the United States has recommitted itself to coal-fired energy sources, as the world's second largest carbon emitter, and presumably, on a new growth-cycle.

Georgia's Scherer coal-fired power plant. (Photo: Wikipedia user Antennas) The Scherer coal-fired power plant near Macon, Ga., is the largest single-point producer of greenhouse gases in the U.S., according to a new website from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Labels: Climate Change, Controversy, Environment, United States

posted by Pieface @ Friday, June 02, 2017