A classic post-truth policy
Canceling the Paris deal is a classic post-truth policy. Based on the outright denial of overwhelming scientific reality — and telegraphed in suspense-building gameshow style this week via Twitter and conflicting media teasers — it is Trump at his most callous, ignorant and attention-seeking.
That “suspense” bullshit was enraging. He treated it like just another “reality” show twist, which is so disgustingly frivolous it makes me go cross-eyed.
As a former reality TV star, Trump cares about how things look, not how they really are. Torpedoing climate efforts is the ultimate “up yours” to liberals — after all, that’s the point. The aim is symbolic, but faced with higher carbon emissions and consequent disastrous global warming, our children may not see it that way.
The whole drought-starvation-mass migrations-wars thing will make it difficult.
China will pick up what Trump threw away.
China’s leaders have long recognized the economic opportunities in moving aggressively into clean energy technologies. Solar is now cheaper — as well as cleaner — than coal in many developing countries.
Trump, who likes to pose as a successful businessman, seems not to understand the value of innovation. Instead he seeks to turn the clock back to an imagined golden age of fossil fuels. If America falls behind in the clean energy revolution, it is not Trump who will pay the price.
Trump never does pay the price.
Remember how, when he looked to be losing the election, he played coy about whether he would deign to accept the result?
Vividly.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1555145631170559/?type=3&theater
The orange incarnation of infinite stupidity and evil certainly deserves all the hate and contempt in the known universe and beyond, but let’s not talk as if everyone else were suddenly performing admirably on the climate issue. The truth of the matter is that there are no good guys in this story (or, if they exist, they’re as marginalized and on the fringe as you can possibly get).
If actions speak louder than words there is practically a universal consensus across the industrialized parts of the world that we are definitely going to emit more – a lot more – carbon than even the most optimistic scientific assessments deem compatible with the goal of limiting global warming to 2 °C. We are still going to reach the target, however, and the way that is going to happen is that the laws of physics are going to grant us a special dispensation for the sake of the economy. Of course nobody is going to come out and say that, but that’s what the prevailing view amounts to in practice.
The only Paris deal Trump would be interested in would involve Ms. Hilton.
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