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Last Thursday afternoon President Trump walked into the Rose Garden and told the American public “we’re getting out” of the Paris Climate Agreement. The spectacle, classically Trump, came after days of leaks saturated cable punditry with speculation and preemptive partisan squabbling. The amateurish administration watched as Twitter shifted its short attention span from Trump’s most recent harmless error – #covfefe – to his next tragic mistake.
Trump’s decision is undoubtedly tragic. The Paris Agreement represents an incredible achievement for global governance and the green energy movement. The pact, joined by nearly 200 countries, sets ambitious emission targets designed to curb global temperature increases to a manageable 2º Celsius. The United States, the world’s second largest polluter, emits 18% of the world’s carbon. We now join Syria (entrenched in a deadly Civil War) and Nicaragua (a green energy stalwart who held out for a greener deal) in a small and informidable group of dissenters.
The decision to leave the Paris Agreement is the most potent example of Trump’s jingoistic “America First” foreign policy doctrine to date — and may be the most damaging to America’s status as the world’s lone superpower. Angela Merkel has clearly moved on, speaking to German voters after Trump’s romp through Europe she warned, “the time that we can rely on others is a bit in the past.” Europe’s strongest leader has already shifted her focus to China calling the quasi-communist nation an “important and strategic” partner.
America’s self-imposed solitude will have real consequences – we have lost our seat at the table as the world begins to rebuild its energy infrastructure.
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But Trump’s decision to withdrawal is also a reflection of a new American ethic in the era of Trump. America is no longer a reliable ally in global governance. In Trump’s White House, diplomacy and collective action are for suckers — or at least elitist liberals who watch MSNBC. Trump is not content with isolation, but is imposing his own nihilism on the world through American foreign policy. His lieutenants “primed the pump” for a Paris withdrawal earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal articulating the administration’s depressing world view. “The world is not a global community but an arena where nations, non-governmental actors, and businesses engage and compete for advantage.” If this is true, then Trump has made clear the United States has, at least temporarily, changed teams.
My mother used to tell me when I was a kid, “show me who your friends are and I’ll show you your future.” Right now, America’s future looks bleak. The U.S withdrawal has already ostracized America from its most important allies. The President of the European Union, Jean-Claude Juncker, unabashedly denounced Trump’s decision and added that Europe would not act as “vassals of the Americans.” Berlin added this morning, “U.S. climate move can’t and won’t stop those of us who feel obliged to protect the planet.” Meanwhile, in the first year of Trump’s presidency he’s invited Rodrigo Duterte to the White House, was silent when Erdogan’s thugs attacked protesters in the nation’s capital, and of course his association with Putin is well documented – despite the President’s best efforts.
After years of conservatives lambasting President Obama for “leading from behind,” Trump has abdicated America’s role on the world stage. America’s self-imposed solitude will have real consequences – we have lost our seat at the table as the world begins to rebuild its energy infrastructure. Beijing will certainly be happy to fill the void left by America’s ill-fated decision and is well positioned to do so. China has invested billions to complete their One Belt, One Road initiative, building partnerships with Europe and building the developing world’s infrastructure to receive Chinese products. Trump, the ultimate deal maker, just missed out.
Although the decision is now official, Americans and the world have one last hope, Trump’s incompetence. The clock has started on a four-year withdrawal process, that ends conveniently on Nov. 4, one day after the next presidential election. If the President insists on making big decisions for small, petty, and partisan reasons the GOP’s dominance in Washington will inevitably be short lived. America can, and will, survive Trump. But in this instance, what doesn’t kill us certainly will not make us stronger.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
What doesn’t kill us does not make us stronger. Trump. ObamaCare. Hillary. Obsession with LGBTQ-EIEIO to the detriment of Real issues. Trillions in debt to support policies designed to dumb down the electorate.
Is Trump a great President? I think most people can agree no. But he doesn’t warrant this incessant slamming when there are other sometimes more important issues that the media should be informing us about. At the moment, *that* is what is most ‘not making us stronger’.
We have several chances to turn America around in not electing Reagan, Bush, Jr., Bush, Sr., and the members of the Republican Congress, but we did not do so.
We had several chances to turn America in not electing Reagan, Bush, Sr., Bush, Jr. and electing Ross Perot, but we did not do so.
Trump may have overstated the economic harm of the Paris Agreement, but the value of the Agreement has itself been overstated. Even if the signatories to the Paris Agreement met all met their stated reduction goals perfectly, it is highly unlikely that it would have been sufficient keep the temperature rise to 2*C or less, let alone avoid the tipping point of runaway warming. This was strongly indicated before the conclusion of the Agreement, and has since been reaffirmed by subsequent analysis. Even then, Trump’s announcement was much ado about nothing. The Agreement is nonbinding. The levels of reduction pledged… Read more »
“If the President insists on making big decisions for small, petty, and partisan reasons the GOP’s dominance in Washington will inevitably be short lived.” I don’t know. This seems to be at the very core of his electoral appeal, rather than being Kryptonite or an Achilles heel: The appeal is the very visceral, demonstrative disdain or contempt for all heretofore objective conventional wisdom, reason, logic and institutions- wrapped up in the pseudo-justification or rationalization that it really isn’t just that. Don’t underestimate the wider vicarious appeal & desire for an agenda or trajectory that is small, petty, partisan, and ultimately… Read more »