Now this is interesting. I was rereading the Paris Accord (remember I linked it last page) and towards the end we find this:
Article 28 1. At any time after three years from the date on which this Agreement has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this Agreement by giving written notification to the Depositary. 2. Any such withdrawal shall take effect upon expiry of one year from the date of receipt by the Depositary of the notification of withdrawal, or on such later date as may be specified in the notification of withdrawal. 3. Any Party that withdraws from the Convention shall be considered as also having withdrawn from this Agreement.
The agreement went into force for the United States on 4 November 2016 so the earliest date we can withdraw is 4 November 2019 and the withdrawal itself will not take effect until 4 November 2020 (it may be a few days later, of course, depending upon when notice is actually delivered to the Depositary as noted in sentence 2). Election Day in 2020 is 3 November (the first Tuesday after 1 Nov; look it up for yourself) so our official withdrawal cannot take place until *after* the next Presidential election; until then the Agreement is in force and binding. Given that I project that Trump will lose the person who wins can likely renew our participation in the Agreement on 20 January 2021 as soon as the Chief Justice administers the Oath of Office. Problem solved.
In other words, don't make more out of "Trump pulled out" (I simply had to make that joke--couldn't help it) than there is to it. Trump most likely *wants* his opponents to freak out and make a big deal out of it--he likes the attention. My advice is not to give him the attention he wants. React to his decision to withdraw with shrugged shoulders and a half-hearted "meh, whatever". I suspect being treated as irrelevant will get on his nerves.
I guess that's not really the main point of all this (by "that" I mean the actual immediate effects on our climate prospects). The problem is that he pulled out of it at all and what it says to nearly every other country in the world. Again, China is exceeding what they agreed to, a country that is legendary for it's pollution. Saudi Arabia, whose massive fortune runs on fossil fuels, has seen fit to sign on. It's that, between this and his apparent attempted shakedown of countries in NATO (and let's remember, Article 5 has been used ONCE, and it was to help us after 9/11) he is making a mockery of whatever standing, respect, and trustworthiness the United States had on the world stage. And, regardless of whether many Americans believe it or not, we inhabit this planet with other people and other countries. It's saying the rules do not apply to us (and really, we've been saying that to everyone since WW2 anyway, but at least past Presidents attempted to pretend we weren't), but, more importantly, it says that we simply cannot be trusted to keep our word, on anything. Like many things in life, the Paris Accord has no legal binding, but operates on what we would call "the honor system". Well, as I'm sure you can all attest, people in your life who ignore the honor system are not likely people you think highly of. And today, as a country, we simply have no honor. Because we are being led by a snake-oil salesman.
I'd like to touch one more time on the low-minded idiocy of Trump's "I was elected to represent Pittsburgh, not Paris". I get why this plays to his base. The right has seen fit to mock the French since they refused to go along with our disaster in Iraq (who turned out right in that one??) and Pittsburgh evokes the Steelers, and "blue collar" America. Well guess what?? I mentioned before that the county Pittsburgh is in went 56-40% for Hillary, which is already a substantial majority, but the CITY itself voted for her at an 80% clip. But moreover, he couldn't have possibly picked a worse example. Pittsburgh is practically a poster child for a formerly industrial city that has reinvented itself as a leader in innovative technology and renewable energy. It's the blueprint for how the goals at the heart of the Paris agreement can work AND provide a major boost to the economy.
I place very little value on whether other nations like us, think highly of us, or whether they think we have honor. I need not have a positive relationship with my neighbors to be civil with them if our paths happen to cross.
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Hillary is now throwing the DNC under the bus, blaming their data as part of the reason she lost the election. Even other Democrats are getting tired of her blame game; she should comport herself with more dignity and stop talking about the election.
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Lebanon has banned the Wonder Woman movie because Gal Gadot served in the Israeli military.
I place very little value on whether other nations like us, think highly of us, or whether they think we have honor. I need not have a positive relationship with my neighbors to be civil with them if our paths happen to cross.
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Hillary is now throwing the DNC under the bus, blaming their data as part of the reason she lost the election. Even other Democrats are getting tired of her blame game; she should comport herself with more dignity and stop talking about the election.
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Lebanon has banned the Wonder Woman movie because Gal Gadot served in the Israeli military.
I agree. Treaties are seldom worth the paper they're printed on. Actions will always speak louder than words. I also won't believe China is 'taking the lead' until I see it. Call me a skeptic I guess...
Now this is interesting. I was rereading the Paris Accord (remember I linked it last page) and towards the end we find this:
Article 28 1. At any time after three years from the date on which this Agreement has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this Agreement by giving written notification to the Depositary. 2. Any such withdrawal shall take effect upon expiry of one year from the date of receipt by the Depositary of the notification of withdrawal, or on such later date as may be specified in the notification of withdrawal. 3. Any Party that withdraws from the Convention shall be considered as also having withdrawn from this Agreement.
The agreement went into force for the United States on 4 November 2016 so the earliest date we can withdraw is 4 November 2019 and the withdrawal itself will not take effect until 4 November 2020 (it may be a few days later, of course, depending upon when notice is actually delivered to the Depositary as noted in sentence 2). Election Day in 2020 is 3 November (the first Tuesday after 1 Nov; look it up for yourself) so our official withdrawal cannot take place until *after* the next Presidential election; until then the Agreement is in force and binding. Given that I project that Trump will lose the person who wins can likely renew our participation in the Agreement on 20 January 2021 as soon as the Chief Justice administers the Oath of Office. Problem solved.
In other words, don't make more out of "Trump pulled out" (I simply had to make that joke--couldn't help it) than there is to it. Trump most likely *wants* his opponents to freak out and make a big deal out of it--he likes the attention. My advice is not to give him the attention he wants. React to his decision to withdraw with shrugged shoulders and a half-hearted "meh, whatever". I suspect being treated as irrelevant will get on his nerves.
I guess that's not really the main point of all this (by "that" I mean the actual immediate effects on our climate prospects). The problem is that he pulled out of it at all and what it says to nearly every other country in the world. Again, China is exceeding what they agreed to, a country that is legendary for it's pollution. Saudi Arabia, whose massive fortune runs on fossil fuels, has seen fit to sign on. It's that, between this and his apparent attempted shakedown of countries in NATO (and let's remember, Article 5 has been used ONCE, and it was to help us after 9/11) he is making a mockery of whatever standing, respect, and trustworthiness the United States had on the world stage. And, regardless of whether many Americans believe it or not, we inhabit this planet with other people and other countries. It's saying the rules do not apply to us (and really, we've been saying that to everyone since WW2 anyway, but at least past Presidents attempted to pretend we weren't), but, more importantly, it says that we simply cannot be trusted to keep our word, on anything. Like many things in life, the Paris Accord has no legal binding, but operates on what we would call "the honor system". Well, as I'm sure you can all attest, people in your life who ignore the honor system are not likely people you think highly of. And today, as a country, we simply have no honor. Because we are being led by a snake-oil salesman.
I'd like to touch one more time on the low-minded idiocy of Trump's "I was elected to represent Pittsburgh, not Paris". I get why this plays to his base. The right has seen fit to mock the French since they refused to go along with our disaster in Iraq (who turned out right in that one??) and Pittsburgh evokes the Steelers, and "blue collar" America. Well guess what?? I mentioned before that the county Pittsburgh is in went 56-40% for Hillary, which is already a substantial majority, but the CITY itself voted for her at an 80% clip. But moreover, he couldn't have possibly picked a worse example. Pittsburgh is practically a poster child for a formerly industrial city that has reinvented itself as a leader in innovative technology and renewable energy. It's the blueprint for how the goals at the heart of the Paris agreement can work AND provide a major boost to the economy.
Well when all these other countries show us how great this is working out for them we can jump in and join them any time. Let someone else take the lead for a change.
Well when all these other countries show us how great this is working out for them we can jump in and join them any time. Let someone else take the lead for a change.
Yeah with one President we've voluntarily given up our global leadership role to let others lead.
How is giving up power, throwing in the towel, calling it quits, a good thing long term for the USA?
Trump's always worried about "other countries laughing at us" well they are now because he's a dunderhead. He's a bull in a china shop. He's giving away power. He's got blinders on to inconvenient truths. This guy is bad for America. Are we going to be the 7th "business" he bankrupts?
Well when all these other countries show us how great this is working out for them we can jump in and join them any time. Let someone else take the lead for a change.
Yeah with one President we've voluntarily given up our global leadership role to let others lead.
How is giving up power, throwing in the towel, calling it quits, a good thing long term for the USA?
Trump's always worried about "other countries laughing at us" well they are now because he's a dunderhead. He's a bull in a china shop. He's giving away power. He's got blinders on to inconvenient truths. This guy is bad for America. Are we going to be the 7th "business" he bankrupts?
I guess I don't see what 'power' we're giving up here. The power to give other nations our money?
Well when all these other countries show us how great this is working out for them we can jump in and join them any time. Let someone else take the lead for a change.
Yeah with one President we've voluntarily given up our global leadership role to let others lead.
How is giving up power, throwing in the towel, calling it quits, a good thing long term for the USA?
Trump's always worried about "other countries laughing at us" well they are now because he's a dunderhead. He's a bull in a china shop. He's giving away power. He's got blinders on to inconvenient truths. This guy is bad for America. Are we going to be the 7th "business" he bankrupts?
I guess I don't see what 'power' we're giving up here. The power to give other nations our money?
Leadership. Influence. We're giving it away. In this example, even thought Trump denies it, climate change is real so other countries will figure it out without the US. They will get the jobs in renewable energy. They will develop the tech of the future. We'll have to buy it from them later because it's really a thing.
In the future, there will be something else. And maybe they won't bother to clue us in. Eventually, they will be telling us what to do. Merkel basically said we don't need to wait on the USA's leadership. So they (the EU) will be exerting leadership and influence and we'll be playing catch up.
You guys know that things can get worse right? There's no guarantee we're going to be "USA teh #1" forever? Especially when we go backwards instead of forwards. We should be making america great for the future not chasing some imaginary obsolete past.
There's no teeth behind this treaty. It's basically symbolic so people can 'feel good' about doing something. The U.S. can lead by example without ever signing some stupid 'treaty'. That's basically what I'm saying...
There's no teeth behind this treaty. It's basically symbolic so people can 'feel good' about doing something. The U.S. can lead by example without ever signing some stupid 'treaty'. That's basically what I'm saying...
That we can but pulling out of a toothless treaty is leading in a kind of way. Leading the wrong way. We're letting china and europe develop wind, solar and renewable energy solutions that are cheaper and better than coal. For what?
True, I think 61 mayors said they will abide by the treaty thereby undermining Trump so that's cool but still pulling out was just dumb.
Even if we lead by developing solutions and clean up our environment we'll still be the country that pulled out of the treaty.
If the President has the authority to sign the United States onto the Paris Accord or withdraw from it at will then the person who steps into office in 2020 to replace Trump can easily reinstate our agreement to abide by the accord.
I'm not disagreeing with that, I'm stating that our world reputation is now completely shot to shit. Now, some people don't care, some people may even like it (not you specifically of course). But it IS true.
Hm, maybe Obama shouldn't have illegally fake-ratified the treaty via executive order, with a 4 year waiting period for withdrawing no less, intentionally designed to extort his successor into complying with it despite the unconstitutionality of its "ratification" or else trigger harm to the nation's reputation and trustworthiness on the world stage.
There's a reason why a president's power is subject to the two-term limit, and why senate approval is required for proper treaties. Obama's ploy blatantly ignored both, was unprecedented, and everyone who is not a blind partisan should hope to God that it goes down in history as an unconstitutional but quickly corrected aberration rather than the "new normal" which presidents can from now on get away with to exert theoretically infinite power past the end of their term.
I think it was absolutely shameful for Obama to do this just because he was on his way out anyway and thus could get away with it (for now); a reckless shot against the fabric of constitutional democracy for short-term partisan political gain.
So now, Obama's successor had two options:
a) Let himself be extorted, and act as if the treaty had indeed been legally ratified, in order to not upset the other treaty members - thus normalizing this dangerous and unconstitutional new type of executive power grab.
b) Bite the bullet and revoke the fake-ratified treaty, and suffer the (temporary) setback in diplomatic relations with the other treaty members. Then either leave it at that (if it's not a good treaty), or re-start the process to get the treaty properly ratified by senate (if it is).
Personally, I think (b) would be the lesser evil even if it were a good treaty (which this one is not).
TL:DR: Yes @jjstraka34, pulling out of the treaty before the end of the 4-year waiting period causes harm, but it was Obama who callously engineered this harm, not Trump, and it's less harm than would be caused by not pulling out.
Logic and history dictate that all nations rise and fall. We were never going to be "number one" forever regardless of what we did (or didn't do).
Policies, laws, and/or regulations regarding climate issues or emissions fall under the domain of Congress, not the Executive. Their track record shows that Republicans favor not putting limitations on business; however, if the Democrats had really wanted to enact rules designed to ameliorate climate problems they would have done so back when they controlled both Houses of Congress. Clearly, that must not have been something they valued at the time. Perhaps the next time they control both Houses they won't worry about trying to reach across the aisle or be bipartisan and will, instead, pursue their agenda while they have the power to do so.
I have to track down the article but I read once that given the current level of technology the entire world's energy needs can be completely met by covering only 0.1% (it may be a little more now--the original statistic was a few years ago) of the entire surface area of the planet with solar panel. update: oh, I found it but you have to download the .pdf report linked to the article itself. Clearly, solar has the drawbacks of "what happens at night?" and "what happens when it is cloudy?" but, truthfully, that is why backup generators running on natural gas or capacitors exist--to supplement the panels. Ideally, though, you would back up the panels with wind or geothermal (where it exists)--it isn't often when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing at the same time.
@ineth the Paris Agreement is not a treaty, which is why Obama argued the senate approval route was not required.
It is a treaty the sense of US constitutional law.
The fact that the UN uses a different classification for what it calls "treaties" or "agreements", surely made it easier for Obama to sell his power grab to his supporters, but changed nothing about the illegal and immoral nature of it.
In addition to your concerns about ratification you also state that the agreement is bad. Can I ask what you object to about it?
Simple: The cost-benefit ratio is atrocious.
Even if it were faithfully and successfully implemented by every participating country (which, let's face it, would never come even close to happening regardless of whether the US stayed in the deal, but hypothetically even if it were) it would only slow down climate change by a miniscule amount.
At the same time, it would inflict great economic costs on the participating countries, and a multitude of geopolitical/social/humanitarian costs on top of that. (Just as one example of a humanitarian opportunity cost: In order to get China to pro-forma play a long with this, efforts to get China to respect human rights had to be significantly scaled back, because there's only a limited amount of leverage the West has against China.)
So, how does one react to an option that comes with high cost but near-zero benefit?
Ideologues react by pontificating about how "symbolic" it is, and think this somehow makes it a good option (it does not).
Social studies graduates who clearly don't understand the simple economic concept of diminishing returns, assure us that it's "only the first step", and think this somehow makes it a good option (it emphatically does not).
A businessman, or any sensible person really, pulls the plug on such a bad option ASAP.
Whatever failings and bad qualities Trump has (and he does have many), it seems his business instincts are proving an asset right now.
It's not a treaty, it's not even a legally binding agreement, as has been stated about half a dozen times already, but people on both sides of the argument and in the middle of it.
The idea it was going to hurt the economy is also a bunch of bogus nonsense. I'm sure the CEOs of Exxon, General Electric, and Elon Musk would have favored staying in the agreement if they thought it was going to hurt their bottom-line in any way. And again, it was a VOLUNTARY agreement. The idea that Trump is pushing that we signed onto to having some economy choking weight around our necks is crap. As for sending money to other countries, yeah. The rich countries the ones burning all the fuel, and we've pillaged many of these poorer countries of their resources, which makes them ill-equipped to deal with the already evident signs of climate change, especially ones near a coast. But, then again, most Americans don't have the first clue what being a global citizen is about. If it doesn't affect them or their immediate friends and family, it isn't actually happening. The "screw you, I got mine" mentality in this country borders on the sociopathic at times.
@ineth thanks for the response. That's consistent with Trump's approach that the agreement would be bad for the economy, although that argument seems flawed to me. There are lots of reasons for that, e.g. - the costs for a number of renewable technologies are already comparable to fossil fuels (and cheaper than nuclear) and are still getting cheaper - which is unlikely to be the case for fossil fuels in the longer term. - there will be huge competitive advantages available to countries that lead the development of future renewables (particularly those which are not intermittent, e.g. tidal energy). For small investments now the future pay-offs could be enormous. - the same arguments about not investing in costly research could have been (in fact were) raised about fossil fuel development historically. - nearly all major corporations (not just those dealing with new technologies, but fossil fuel companies as well) are actively researching how to react to climate change in order to protect their commercial positions. - the fairly small amount of resources that the USA was intending to offer other countries would have provided an opportunity to sell them renewable technology (in a similar way to the historical precedents of providing aid in the form of oil wells).
As has been stated above the Paris Agreement does not actually require countries to do anything anyway and therefore, if it really was considered that targets being set were an economic burden, those targets could simply have been scrapped or ignored.
Even if you don't accept the argument that there are economic benefits to be had, I think you also need to review the potential costs. These are not trivial, but absolutely huge. The Paris Agreement aimed to limit worldwide temperature increases to 1.5 degrees above the level in the 1880s. That seems incredibly unlikely to happen as we're already at about 1 degree above that level (1.3 degrees in 2016) and projections are that the increase will go above 3 degrees, even if all the targets currently set under the Paris Agreement are met. Even the rise of 3 degrees would have major impacts across the world, e.g. as a result of shifting climates and rising sea levels - not all of those effects would be bad, but they would all be disruptive and make international relations more difficult.
Finally I think there is a real issue about the way countries interact to deal with climate change. The impact from that will not respect national boundaries, so will affect everyone whether they like it or not. In those circumstances it seems to me that a multilateral approach provides the best hope of resolving conflicts over things like access to water, fishing rights, managing refugees. I know Trump dislikes multilateral forums, but while bilateral treaties may be a possible approach to trade negotiations, I can't see them being much use dealing with the impacts of climate change.
It's not a treaty, it's not even a legally binding agreement, as has been stated about half a dozen times already, but people on both sides of the argument and in the middle of it.
The idea it was going to hurt the economy is also a bunch of bogus nonsense. I'm sure the CEOs of Exxon, General Electric, and Elon Musk would have favored staying in the agreement if they thought it was going to hurt their bottom-line in any way. And again, it was a VOLUNTARY agreement. The idea that Trump is pushing that we signed onto to having some economy choking weight around our necks is crap. As for sending money to other countries, yeah. The rich countries the ones burning all the fuel, and we've pillaged many of these poorer countries of their resources, which makes them ill-equipped to deal with the already evident signs of climate change, especially ones near a coast. But, then again, most Americans don't have the first clue what being a global citizen is about. If it doesn't affect them or their immediate friends and family, it isn't actually happening. The "screw you, I got mine" mentality in this country borders on the sociopathic at times.
Pillaged them? I don't recall the U.S. pillaging anybody. The only colonies we ever had (including the Phillipines) cost us more than we ever got back from them. Hell, we even rebuild our enemies after we kick their asses. I'm surprised North Korea doesn't surrender to us. That would be their quickest route to prosperity!
This is....SO unsurprising. Because, despite my obvious disdain for organized religion, much like my childhood spent in rural America, I have extensive field work in the Christian religion, serving as an altar boy every Saturday for nearly 4 years straight, and having actually read the Bible from cover to cover, and the fact that I could still probably recite a Catholic Mass backwards and forwards by heart.
There is a reason I knew Trump was a fraud when talking about his religion, and it's the same reason I suspect most Evangelicals, if pressed, would have to admit to as well. Because Trump thought "2nd Corinthians" was "Two Corinthians". Saint Paul's letter to the Corinthians is, right after the 4 gospels, without question, THE most common book of the Bible in church readings. It is used as the 2nd reading (since the first is almost always from the Old Testament) roughly every 3rd week or more. I can guarantee you that anyone who thinks it is called "Two Corinthians" has attended less than 8 church services in his entire life. And the thing is, anyone who is serious about the Christian faith KNOWS this is case, and that he is simply lying about everything to do with his religious beliefs. No one can seriously believe with any intellectual honesty that Donald Trump is a religious man.
Hell, we even rebuild our enemies after we kick their asses.
The perfect example being Japan. Folks at the time believed that the only way to make Japan into a peaceful country was to demilitarize and democratize it, and the only way to keep it on the path to democracy and prevent it from sliding into communism like so many of its neighbors was to combat poverty and promote economic growth. By the end of the occupation, the U.S. had spent $2,000,000,000 on rebuilding Japan.
I remember reading about this Japanese guy who was hanging out with an American soldier during the occupation. The Japanese guy pointed out the infrastructure that the U.S. was building in Japan to support Japan's recovery, and he said to the American,
"Japan won the war, no?"
It's the primary reason why the U.S. and Japan have had such a close and positive relationship since 1945, despite the horrors of the war years. The U.S. helped Japan back on its feet, and rather than give the U.S. a bloody insurgency to deal with (which is what we had been fearing), Japan worked with the authorities and SCAP to demilitarize and democratize the nation. To this day, Japan has served both as a valuable economic partner and a shining example of pacifism and democracy in the region.
It seems Kathy Griffin apologized for the whole fiasco in a lengthy press conference.
Her career might not recover from the damage anytime soon, but an apology was the right way to go.
I've been thinking about this for a couple of days, and I've come to one conclusion. That if Kathy Griffin had wanted to save her career, in the age of Trump, she should have never apologized in the first place. This is the age we are living in. Ted Nugent and Ann Coulter have never apologized for a damn thing in their entire public lives, and they haven't suffered a hint of career damage. Trump never apologized for anything. When he was accused of sexual assault, he threatened to sue the victims. When he was caught in a blatant lies, he went to war with reality itself, and, in some ways, won.
Trump isn't strong or a winner, but he ACTS like he is, and that is all it takes to fool a large portion of this country. They seem to respect at least the VENEER of strength, and despise weakness. And that is why Democrats lose. Their ideas consistently poll astronomically high, and yet they get ripped at the ballot box. So start standing up for yourself. Republicans and the right-wing are going to mock you for taking the "moral high ground" anyway, so all you are surrendering is something they are already exploiting against you. This is sad to say, but, to quote Toby Ziegler in an episode of the West Wing "they'll like you when you win." So get out there with some damn confidence and act like a winner. The Republicans never apologized for embracing birtherism, they never once had any qualms about going after Bill Clinton's sexual escapades while they themselves were involved in affairs. As I've said many times before, you can't win a game of Monopoly when your opponent is raiding the bank every other turn and not playing by any standardized rules. It's not the "right" thing to do, but if Kathy Griffin had wanted to weather this storm, the plan should have been clear: double-down and don't give an inch. This isn't a good thing, but I do view it as a reality.
Case in point: the Hillary Clinton who gave the lengthy interview at the conference a couple days ago, with caution thrown to the wind and someone with nothing left to lose, is actually someone I genuinely LIKED and would have enthusiastically voted for, rather than just being someone I was weighing as better than the disaster of Trump.
if Kathy Griffin had wanted to weather this storm, the plan should have been clear: double-down and don't give an inch. This isn't a good thing, but I do view it as a reality.
Sounds like a recipe for long term division (or do two wrongs now in fact make a right in today's alternative reality). Personally I'm happy to see someone accepting they did the wrong thing rather than 'doubling down'.
I actually agree with you. I doubt Kathy Griffin is truly sorry anyway so why apologize? She may have gotten a little carried away but hey, we live in a free society. Folks on both sides of the spectrum are a little too thin-skinned these days if you ask me.
if Kathy Griffin had wanted to weather this storm, the plan should have been clear: double-down and don't give an inch. This isn't a good thing, but I do view it as a reality.
Sounds like a recipe for long term division (or do two wrongs now in fact make a right in today's alternative reality). Personally I'm happy to see someone accepting they did the wrong thing rather than 'doubling down'.
Well, that is the right thing to do, but it's not going to get her anywhere, nor mollify those who would use it as a political cudgel against the left. So it entirely depends on what you are going for. I'm saying that the American Right has instinctively understood this for damn near 30 years. Don't apologize (not in any real way), don't back down from any position, and, in most cases, actually double-down on them.
if Kathy Griffin had wanted to weather this storm, the plan should have been clear: double-down and don't give an inch. This isn't a good thing, but I do view it as a reality.
Sounds like a recipe for long term division (or do two wrongs now in fact make a right in today's alternative reality). Personally I'm happy to see someone accepting they did the wrong thing rather than 'doubling down'.
Well, that is the right thing to do, but it's not going to get her anywhere, nor mollify those who would use it as a political cudgel against the left. So it entirely depends on what you are going for. I'm saying that the American Right has instinctively understood this for damn near 30 years. Don't apologize (not in any real way), don't back down from any position, and, in most cases, actually double-down on them.
There's no teeth behind this treaty. It's basically symbolic so people can 'feel good' about doing something. The U.S. can lead by example without ever signing some stupid 'treaty'. That's basically what I'm saying...
That we can but pulling out of a toothless treaty is leading in a kind of way. Leading the wrong way. We're letting china and europe develop wind, solar and renewable energy solutions that are cheaper and better than coal. For what?
I suggest researching/reading up on Ontario energy problems before making this claim.
Hydro rates skyrocketed and continue to skyrocket due to the mismanagement of a green energy program. It drove away businesses due to high cost and, took over local farming fields for wind and solar farms increasing the price or produce.
I can go more into it later, but the green energy hype should not be trusted, unless a place actually can take full advantage of their renewable source (such as hydro-electric dams).
Hell, we even rebuild our enemies after we kick their asses.
The perfect example being Japan. Folks at the time believed that the only way to make Japan into a peaceful country was to demilitarize and democratize it, and the only way to keep it on the path to democracy and prevent it from sliding into communism like so many of its neighbors was to combat poverty and promote economic growth. By the end of the occupation, the U.S. had spent $2,000,000,000 on rebuilding Japan.
I remember reading about this Japanese guy who was hanging out with an American soldier during the occupation. The Japanese guy pointed out the infrastructure that the U.S. was building in Japan to support Japan's recovery, and he said to the American,
"Japan won the war, no?"
It's the primary reason why the U.S. and Japan have had such a close and positive relationship since 1945, despite the horrors of the war years. The U.S. helped Japan back on its feet, and rather than give the U.S. a bloody insurgency to deal with (which is what we had been fearing), Japan worked with the authorities and SCAP to demilitarize and democratize the nation. To this day, Japan has served both as a valuable economic partner and a shining example of pacifism and democracy in the region.
Well we tried to do the same thing in Iraq. Bombed the crap out of them then spent money to rebuild them afterwards. Not really working there is it? Anyway, the old "bomb n' build" doesn't always work. Probably especially since they are landlocked and surrounded by other powers maybe?
Comments
I'd like to touch one more time on the low-minded idiocy of Trump's "I was elected to represent Pittsburgh, not Paris". I get why this plays to his base. The right has seen fit to mock the French since they refused to go along with our disaster in Iraq (who turned out right in that one??) and Pittsburgh evokes the Steelers, and "blue collar" America. Well guess what?? I mentioned before that the county Pittsburgh is in went 56-40% for Hillary, which is already a substantial majority, but the CITY itself voted for her at an 80% clip. But moreover, he couldn't have possibly picked a worse example. Pittsburgh is practically a poster child for a formerly industrial city that has reinvented itself as a leader in innovative technology and renewable energy. It's the blueprint for how the goals at the heart of the Paris agreement can work AND provide a major boost to the economy.
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Hillary is now throwing the DNC under the bus, blaming their data as part of the reason she lost the election. Even other Democrats are getting tired of her blame game; she should comport herself with more dignity and stop talking about the election.
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Lebanon has banned the Wonder Woman movie because Gal Gadot served in the Israeli military.
How is giving up power, throwing in the towel, calling it quits, a good thing long term for the USA?
Trump's always worried about "other countries laughing at us" well they are now because he's a dunderhead. He's a bull in a china shop. He's giving away power. He's got blinders on to inconvenient truths. This guy is bad for America. Are we going to be the 7th "business" he bankrupts?
In the future, there will be something else. And maybe they won't bother to clue us in. Eventually, they will be telling us what to do. Merkel basically said we don't need to wait on the USA's leadership. So they (the EU) will be exerting leadership and influence and we'll be playing catch up.
You guys know that things can get worse right? There's no guarantee we're going to be "USA teh #1" forever? Especially when we go backwards instead of forwards. We should be making america great for the future not chasing some imaginary obsolete past.
True, I think 61 mayors said they will abide by the treaty thereby undermining Trump so that's cool but still pulling out was just dumb.
Even if we lead by developing solutions and clean up our environment we'll still be the country that pulled out of the treaty.
There's a reason why a president's power is subject to the two-term limit, and why senate approval is required for proper treaties.
Obama's ploy blatantly ignored both, was unprecedented, and everyone who is not a blind partisan should hope to God that it goes down in history as an unconstitutional but quickly corrected aberration rather than the "new normal" which presidents can from now on get away with to exert theoretically infinite power past the end of their term.
I think it was absolutely shameful for Obama to do this just because he was on his way out anyway and thus could get away with it (for now); a reckless shot against the fabric of constitutional democracy for short-term partisan political gain.
So now, Obama's successor had two options:
a) Let himself be extorted, and act as if the treaty had indeed been legally ratified, in order to not upset the other treaty members - thus normalizing this dangerous and unconstitutional new type of executive power grab.
b) Bite the bullet and revoke the fake-ratified treaty, and suffer the (temporary) setback in diplomatic relations with the other treaty members. Then either leave it at that (if it's not a good treaty), or re-start the process to get the treaty properly ratified by senate (if it is).
Personally, I think (b) would be the lesser evil even if it were a good treaty (which this one is not).
TL:DR: Yes @jjstraka34, pulling out of the treaty before the end of the 4-year waiting period causes harm, but it was Obama who callously engineered this harm, not Trump, and it's less harm than would be caused by not pulling out.
Policies, laws, and/or regulations regarding climate issues or emissions fall under the domain of Congress, not the Executive. Their track record shows that Republicans favor not putting limitations on business; however, if the Democrats had really wanted to enact rules designed to ameliorate climate problems they would have done so back when they controlled both Houses of Congress. Clearly, that must not have been something they valued at the time. Perhaps the next time they control both Houses they won't worry about trying to reach across the aisle or be bipartisan and will, instead, pursue their agenda while they have the power to do so.
I have to track down the article but I read once that given the current level of technology the entire world's energy needs can be completely met by covering only 0.1% (it may be a little more now--the original statistic was a few years ago) of the entire surface area of the planet with solar panel. update: oh, I found it but you have to download the .pdf report linked to the article itself. Clearly, solar has the drawbacks of "what happens at night?" and "what happens when it is cloudy?" but, truthfully, that is why backup generators running on natural gas or capacitors exist--to supplement the panels. Ideally, though, you would back up the panels with wind or geothermal (where it exists)--it isn't often when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing at the same time.
In addition to your concerns about ratification you also state that the agreement is bad. Can I ask what you object to about it?
The fact that the UN uses a different classification for what it calls "treaties" or "agreements", surely made it easier for Obama to sell his power grab to his supporters, but changed nothing about the illegal and immoral nature of it. Simple: The cost-benefit ratio is atrocious.
Even if it were faithfully and successfully implemented by every participating country (which, let's face it, would never come even close to happening regardless of whether the US stayed in the deal, but hypothetically even if it were) it would only slow down climate change by a miniscule amount.
At the same time, it would inflict great economic costs on the participating countries, and a multitude of geopolitical/social/humanitarian costs on top of that.
(Just as one example of a humanitarian opportunity cost: In order to get China to pro-forma play a long with this, efforts to get China to respect human rights had to be significantly scaled back, because there's only a limited amount of leverage the West has against China.)
So, how does one react to an option that comes with high cost but near-zero benefit?
- Ideologues react by pontificating about how "symbolic" it is, and think this somehow makes it a good option (it does not).
- Social studies graduates who clearly don't understand the simple economic concept of diminishing returns, assure us that it's "only the first step", and think this somehow makes it a good option (it emphatically does not).
- A businessman, or any sensible person really, pulls the plug on such a bad option ASAP.
Whatever failings and bad qualities Trump has (and he does have many), it seems his business instincts are proving an asset right now.The idea it was going to hurt the economy is also a bunch of bogus nonsense. I'm sure the CEOs of Exxon, General Electric, and Elon Musk would have favored staying in the agreement if they thought it was going to hurt their bottom-line in any way. And again, it was a VOLUNTARY agreement. The idea that Trump is pushing that we signed onto to having some economy choking weight around our necks is crap. As for sending money to other countries, yeah. The rich countries the ones burning all the fuel, and we've pillaged many of these poorer countries of their resources, which makes them ill-equipped to deal with the already evident signs of climate change, especially ones near a coast. But, then again, most Americans don't have the first clue what being a global citizen is about. If it doesn't affect them or their immediate friends and family, it isn't actually happening. The "screw you, I got mine" mentality in this country borders on the sociopathic at times.
- the costs for a number of renewable technologies are already comparable to fossil fuels (and cheaper than nuclear) and are still getting cheaper - which is unlikely to be the case for fossil fuels in the longer term.
- there will be huge competitive advantages available to countries that lead the development of future renewables (particularly those which are not intermittent, e.g. tidal energy). For small investments now the future pay-offs could be enormous.
- the same arguments about not investing in costly research could have been (in fact were) raised about fossil fuel development historically.
- nearly all major corporations (not just those dealing with new technologies, but fossil fuel companies as well) are actively researching how to react to climate change in order to protect their commercial positions.
- the fairly small amount of resources that the USA was intending to offer other countries would have provided an opportunity to sell them renewable technology (in a similar way to the historical precedents of providing aid in the form of oil wells).
As has been stated above the Paris Agreement does not actually require countries to do anything anyway and therefore, if it really was considered that targets being set were an economic burden, those targets could simply have been scrapped or ignored.
Even if you don't accept the argument that there are economic benefits to be had, I think you also need to review the potential costs. These are not trivial, but absolutely huge. The Paris Agreement aimed to limit worldwide temperature increases to 1.5 degrees above the level in the 1880s. That seems incredibly unlikely to happen as we're already at about 1 degree above that level (1.3 degrees in 2016) and projections are that the increase will go above 3 degrees, even if all the targets currently set under the Paris Agreement are met. Even the rise of 3 degrees would have major impacts across the world, e.g. as a result of shifting climates and rising sea levels - not all of those effects would be bad, but they would all be disruptive and make international relations more difficult.
Finally I think there is a real issue about the way countries interact to deal with climate change. The impact from that will not respect national boundaries, so will affect everyone whether they like it or not. In those circumstances it seems to me that a multilateral approach provides the best hope of resolving conflicts over things like access to water, fishing rights, managing refugees. I know Trump dislikes multilateral forums, but while bilateral treaties may be a possible approach to trade negotiations, I can't see them being much use dealing with the impacts of climate change.
This is....SO unsurprising. Because, despite my obvious disdain for organized religion, much like my childhood spent in rural America, I have extensive field work in the Christian religion, serving as an altar boy every Saturday for nearly 4 years straight, and having actually read the Bible from cover to cover, and the fact that I could still probably recite a Catholic Mass backwards and forwards by heart.
There is a reason I knew Trump was a fraud when talking about his religion, and it's the same reason I suspect most Evangelicals, if pressed, would have to admit to as well. Because Trump thought "2nd Corinthians" was "Two Corinthians". Saint Paul's letter to the Corinthians is, right after the 4 gospels, without question, THE most common book of the Bible in church readings. It is used as the 2nd reading (since the first is almost always from the Old Testament) roughly every 3rd week or more. I can guarantee you that anyone who thinks it is called "Two Corinthians" has attended less than 8 church services in his entire life. And the thing is, anyone who is serious about the Christian faith KNOWS this is case, and that he is simply lying about everything to do with his religious beliefs. No one can seriously believe with any intellectual honesty that Donald Trump is a religious man.
I remember reading about this Japanese guy who was hanging out with an American soldier during the occupation. The Japanese guy pointed out the infrastructure that the U.S. was building in Japan to support Japan's recovery, and he said to the American,
"Japan won the war, no?"
It's the primary reason why the U.S. and Japan have had such a close and positive relationship since 1945, despite the horrors of the war years. The U.S. helped Japan back on its feet, and rather than give the U.S. a bloody insurgency to deal with (which is what we had been fearing), Japan worked with the authorities and SCAP to demilitarize and democratize the nation. To this day, Japan has served both as a valuable economic partner and a shining example of pacifism and democracy in the region.
Her career might not recover from the damage anytime soon, but an apology was the right way to go.
Trump isn't strong or a winner, but he ACTS like he is, and that is all it takes to fool a large portion of this country. They seem to respect at least the VENEER of strength, and despise weakness. And that is why Democrats lose. Their ideas consistently poll astronomically high, and yet they get ripped at the ballot box. So start standing up for yourself. Republicans and the right-wing are going to mock you for taking the "moral high ground" anyway, so all you are surrendering is something they are already exploiting against you. This is sad to say, but, to quote Toby Ziegler in an episode of the West Wing "they'll like you when you win." So get out there with some damn confidence and act like a winner. The Republicans never apologized for embracing birtherism, they never once had any qualms about going after Bill Clinton's sexual escapades while they themselves were involved in affairs. As I've said many times before, you can't win a game of Monopoly when your opponent is raiding the bank every other turn and not playing by any standardized rules. It's not the "right" thing to do, but if Kathy Griffin had wanted to weather this storm, the plan should have been clear: double-down and don't give an inch. This isn't a good thing, but I do view it as a reality.
Case in point: the Hillary Clinton who gave the lengthy interview at the conference a couple days ago, with caution thrown to the wind and someone with nothing left to lose, is actually someone I genuinely LIKED and would have enthusiastically voted for, rather than just being someone I was weighing as better than the disaster of Trump.
I actually agree with you. I doubt Kathy Griffin is truly sorry anyway so why apologize? She may have gotten a little carried away but hey, we live in a free society. Folks on both sides of the spectrum are a little too thin-skinned these days if you ask me.
Hydro rates skyrocketed and continue to skyrocket due to the mismanagement of a green energy program. It drove away businesses due to high cost and, took over local farming fields for wind and solar farms increasing the price or produce.
I can go more into it later, but the green energy hype should not be trusted, unless a place actually can take full advantage of their renewable source (such as hydro-electric dams).