We are still screwed: the coming climate disaster

Politics and religion
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Welp.

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Something is better than nothing, I guess.

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The stinger: Make our planet great again.

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In other news old bitter man hands the world’s keys to Chinese.

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Pretty much. The Paris agreement was mostly symbolical. Global warming will be not be greatly impacted by Trump’s decision, if at all, as the private sector has already decided to embrace clean energy, at least up to the Paris agreement’s standards.

The US, however, is fucked.

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… aaaaand the return of a classic:

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To be fair, the Weather Channel website is ridiculously clickbaity and fear-inducing even on a good day.

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It seemed like it’s been heading this way for a while. The Pacific nations look to be going ahead on their own with regards to the TPP, China is starting up its own lending system, the European states have decided not to rely on the US and now Trump pulls out of the climate accord even though everyone else is on board.

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I didn’t have time to read the full article but I saw someone arguing along the lines that the rest of the world will probably be better off without us sitting on the fence now that they are all in agreement.

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I’ve been following some conservatives on Twitter who have been very outspoken about Trump, Trumpsters, and bemoaning the state of conservative discourse after decades of talk radio and FNC appealing to the hind brain of white people. However not a single one had anything to say about Trump withdrawing from the Paris climate accords and it left me wondering if any of these same conservatives would still be taking Fox News to the shed if Hillary had won the election.

Actually Bill Krystol liked this tweet.

Hahaha libtards going nuts because they give a shit about the planet they call home.

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What is “left” about wanting to preserve the habitability of Earth? I absolutely fucking do not understand how desiring to mitigate the effects of dumping tons of carbon into the atmosphere, somehow aligns on a ‘left-right’ or ‘liberal-conservative’ axis. It’s like we all tacitly accept that it does, but what possible legitimate reason can there be for placing it there? And incidentally, of the 190-odd countries who have signed on to Paris, how many are ‘left’ vs. ‘right’?

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I assume it’s all something like this.

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Afuckingmen.
“Republicans” aka the reactionary far right are petty children and literally nothing matters to them. They are nihilist cultists with zero capacity for any critical thought.

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How crazy is it that the CEO of Exxon and Goldman Sachs both pleaded with Trump not to do this and Trump is still like, I’ll just do whatever makes liberals sad.

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Yep, it’s the sole organizing principle for ‘conservatives.’
Also, the president of France hurt dear leader’s feelings. Sad face.

To ‘brighten’ everyone’s day, here’s a tweet from an American Republican. Americans are special and exceptional. (The replies are (mostly) worth the read.)

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I came across this article that seems to sum up fairly well how the decision to pull out of the Paris accords is being presented by Trump-friendly media.


The key points:

  1. The US is having to sacrifice much more ($3 trillion and 6.5 million industrial sector jobs by 2040) than other nations.
  2. There’s no enforcement mechanism, so the deal is useless anyway.
  3. The accord doesn’t do much (0.2 degree change) to fight climate change, so it was useless anyway.
  4. Trump is correcting Obama’s mistake here, by pulling the USA out of a deal that put the world first instead of America first. “For a president who promised to put America first—and who won election on the support of working-class Americans in the Rust Belt—this was perfectly on-message and on-brand. The issue transcends the environment, extending to jobs and the economy—and even to national identity.”
  5. There’s a better deal out there, if only the world will work with Trump to make it. “But the goal should be to find a solution that would allow America to maintain a leadership position in the world—both morally, and in terms of clean energy—that would simultaneously limit the jobs losses.”

The numbers there are from a report by the Institute for 21st Century Energy, an energy-industry-friendly think tank. So it’s not surprising that they managed to produce a report that makes the Paris accords sound like Armageddon in economic terms.

To me, the most telling points are those last two. Set aside how much good the Paris agreement actually does (not enough, but it was at least a step in the right direction). #4 - The President is putting America first. Follow that closely with #5 - the best thing for America isn’t bad for the world, because Trump could lead them to the promised land also, if only they’d listen.

I can understand how this appeals to many Americans, especially in places like the Rust Belt where the economy has seemed to stagnate over the last decade or so. If you don’t spend time searching out alternate viewpoints, it’s easy to believe that the world took advantage of the USA in the Paris agreement (and trade deals like NAFTA, and in sending refugees here, etc, etc) because you just have to look around to see people struggling. You want someone to blame, and Trump offers everyone outside our borders as the scapegoats. It doesn’t have to be true, just appealing enough that it feels plausible.

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I wonder if Trump realizes that America is part of the world?