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Trump Announces US Withdrawal From Paris Climate Accord (reuters.com)
It's official. President Donald Trump announced today that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, following through on a pledge he made during the presidential campaign. Trump said the Paris agreement "front loads costs on American people. In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States," the president said. "We are getting out. But we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that's fair. And if we can, that's great." Trump said that the United States will immediately "cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris accord" and what he said were "draconian financial" and other burdens imposed on the country by the accord.
This means that Elon Musk will leave Trump's Business Advisory Council. On Wednesday, Musk said he did "all he could to advise directly to Trump." (Update: Elon Musk is staying true to his words. Following the announcement, Musk tweeted, "Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.")
Twenty-five companies, including Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Salesforce, Morgan Stanley, Intel signed on to a letter which was published on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal today arguing in favor of climate pact.
Update: Former president Barack Obama said the U.S. "joins a small handful of nations that reject the future."
Also, the New York Times points out that despite Trump's public statements, the U.S. can't officially leave the Paris climate agreement until 2020.
This means that Elon Musk will leave Trump's Business Advisory Council. On Wednesday, Musk said he did "all he could to advise directly to Trump." (Update: Elon Musk is staying true to his words. Following the announcement, Musk tweeted, "Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.")
Twenty-five companies, including Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Salesforce, Morgan Stanley, Intel signed on to a letter which was published on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal today arguing in favor of climate pact.
Update: Former president Barack Obama said the U.S. "joins a small handful of nations that reject the future."
Also, the New York Times points out that despite Trump's public statements, the U.S. can't officially leave the Paris climate agreement until 2020.
We get to join Nicaragua and Syria in not being part of the Paris Climate Accord. And Nicaragua didn't sign it because they think it doesn't go far enough.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Trump ran on this position.. I'm not surprised he's doing this... Like him or not, you have to admit that he generally tries to do what he promises...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I've heard rumblings about states like California and New York entering a multi-state compact towards meeting the Paris climate goals. IANAL but AFAIK this sort of agreement is perfectly constitutional.
Finding God in a Dog
He did. T is a virgin birth; the spawn of the orange deity, Cov Fefe.
Table-ized A.I.
Can't really blame a guy for following through with his campaign promises.
Why not? He said "piss off" to his constituents on plenty of other topics, such as Nafta or his hard stance on China. This is simply the willful ignorance of a single man. Individual voters can at least say they voted for him for other reasons and climate change wasn't a litmus test for them, but Trump has no excuse.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Trump Will Announce US Withdrawal From Paris Climate Accord
I'm not surprised, It's the one big thing he can do quickly to fulfil a campaign promise and stick it to the 'libruls' where he does not have to deal with congress, the constitution or the judicial system. He can just pull out of the Paris Accord and declare a glorious victory, temporary balm for a bruised ego. Meanwhile China stands by on the sidelines with plans for a $900 billion fund to invest in overseas energy and infrastructure projects and watches approvingly as the US shoots it self in the foot by abandoning any leading role it may have in the development of clean energy tech. Same for Germany which is in the middle of doing the exact opposite of what Trump plans to do and will along with China probably be a world leader in renewable energy tech if by the time Trump is done takign a machete to the US clean energy tech sector. So, folks! It's amateur hour at the White House for the 132nd day in a row!
Let's be honest: the next time a Democrat is president they will probably either join the Paris accords, or adopt policies that align with the accords anyway. This is what American has turned into: our politics are so partisan that pretty much the first thing a new party administration does when they take office is to overrule or counteract policies of the previous administration (except of course for policies that erode away our rights in the name of "national security"). America is running around in circles (and wasting trillions of dollars in the process) while the rest of the world passes us by. And the sad thing is a lot of Americans are cheering as it happens.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Between California regulations, consumer-driven conservation, the increasing market for electric cars, and the price drop in renewable energy, aren't Americans on track to seriously cut CO2 emissions anyway?
It is impossible to know the foreign relations implications of this long term, except to know it can't be good. All but two nations signed this agreement, with one rejecting it because it didn't go far enough (Nicaragua) and one not even being invited to the table because of its government's legitimacy problems (Syria). The United States is now the only country on the planet who is not part of this agreement because it doesn't find the problem important enough.
It now becomes harder to get countries to work with us on just about anything if we aren't even willing to be part of a goodwill gesture that had no real consequences to us if we stayed in it. It shows the world grown ups are not in control of the executive branch.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
And if a President doesn't follow through on his campaign promises? He's still attacked.
I'm glad I'm not President, half the [unreasonable] people would be pissed off one way or another.
But in cases like this, you will piss off half the unreasonable people and 100% of the reasonable people.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I don't think that market economics are enough to stop global warming. It requires a political component, which the Paris Climate Accord was a small but important part of. It also will require sequestration efforts in addition to CO2-neutral energy production. I can't see us avoiding an unpleasant future unless we enact some kind of CO2 tax to fund renewables and sequestration initiatives, etc. CO2 emissions are a cost that are realized globally but not privately, so market economics alone will not correctly optimize that industry. Pulling out of the Paris Accord really gives the wrong message. It's not that the Paris Accord alone solves much of anything by itself, but it adds political momentum in the right direction.
A lot of history can be told with the narrative that our ancestors went through hell, fought and died, to give future generations a better life. Maybe that's a romanticized view of the past, but regardless it reflects an ideology that's the exact opposite of what we are doing today.
And what is "it really is". Virtually every climatologist states CO2 emissions are increasing surface and ocean temperatures. We're already seeing the direct verifiable signs of that warming, and it will only get worse. Even without US in the Paris agreement, demand for oil is steadily shrinking, so all that really happens now is the US gives up any say on future targets, and will have to rejoin the international community on future agreements with little power save to accede to whatever the EU and China have decided. And for what? For a resource that's value is dwindling, and will never recover? For a decade or two more before oil's value is so low that it's not worth pumping out of the ground? So the Koch Brothers and a few Trump cronies can make a few more bucks, and meanwhile the very people that voted for this halfwit are the ones that get screwed the most?
Oil is dying. Natural gas will follow. Fossil fuels are the past, and good riddance, and the US will regret this for decades to come. But this is how empires die, I suppose, once morons can get to the top of the heap, what's left?
Let's imagine in ten years, when new trade agreements, particularly with large trading blocs, start demanding CO2 reductions as part of any favorable access? Let's try to imagine how much this will cost US manufacturers over the coming decades? Do you think the EU-China climate bloc is just going to let the US off the hook for paying for their towards a carbon-less future? The US will pay, and it will pay dearly, and I hope when the time comes, everyone remembers that it was the sociopaths and morons of the Republican Party, and that payback may come sooner than people think when SCOTUS starts disemboweling gerrymandering and some of these so-called "red states" start turning blue.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And they will, largely because the next phase after Paris is for the climate bloc to begin disincentivizing emissions-heavy industries, which means US manufacturers may find export markets becoming a lot more expensive. A lot of states rely pretty damned heavily on exports, and they'll have little choice but to join a compact that guarantees low emissions as a qualifier for products they ship abroad.
This is the real irony. The halfwit at the top of the heap who keeps talking about how the US needs a better deal is in fact going to fuck over the very people he claims to help, and right now they'll cheer, because everyone loves a guy who confirms their prejudices, but in five, ten years, it will be a rather different story. By then, of course, oil's value will have dwindled even more, and all the folks who pushed Trump to get out of Paris will have made all the money they can. The reason the US is pumping so much oil out of the ground, no matter how much it increases inventory, and regardless of slipping demand, is because if the oil doesn't get pumped out in the next decade or so, it will never get pumped out at all.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
1. Trump alienating our allies is headline news lately.
Give the guy some credit. At least he didn't try to give Angela Merkel a backrub.
Someone had to do it.
massive amounts of taxpayer subsidy
Taxpayer subsidies are bad? Every significant form of renewable energy has been and/or is being supported by all manner of subsidy. Somehow it's only a problem for nuclear/fossil fuels...
And you're badly wrong about the cost of nuclear power. France, for instance, pays less for electricity than every other major European economy because of it's large and well operated nuclear energy system [1]. France also emits far less carbon than its neighbors; have a look at the live map: https://www.electricitymap.org...
[1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s... c/KWh 2016: France: 0.089 Germany: 0.149 UK: 0.128
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
This just in, belligerent nations also understand the value of global virtue-signalling.
China and India are the ONLY ones that matter in terms of global emissions. They still have 2 billion people between them that are dirt-poor and have yet to take part in their national economy in any meaningful way. Right now, with only 1/4 of their populations economically active, they account for over 37% of TOTAL GLOBAL EMISSIONS.
The US, with 350m people and 99% economic engagement accounts for 16% and decreasing. China and India will continue growing, and their overall percentage will increase dramatically in just 5 years.
Per-capita use isn't an argument either, sure the US has higher per-capita use, but if you look at the actual number of economically engaged people in India and China, their per-capita use is actually higher than the US, it's just averaged out across the other 2 billion people that aren't responsible for anything more than cookfire smoke - no cars, no consumer goods, no roads, no airplane travel, because they can't afford any of those luxuries.
The US was committed to 25%+ reduction in just 7 years. China and India's pledges were next to nothing - no percentages of reductions, just vague promises to spend more on renewables and the (non-binding) promise to do 'something' by 2030. That's a pretty one-sided agreement, and the 25%+ reduction in the US would do absolutely nothing in the long-term for the world, but would hurt the US economy.
What is this nonsense? Who called it a treaty? Where are you getting this from?
Do you even know what a treaty is? Do you know what an agreement is? Do you know what the constitution actually requires? It doesn't say: "The President is congress' little bitch and has to get approval before he says anything to anyone." Under the present circumstances that may be an unfortunate truth, but it is a truth.
By keeping a coal plant open two days, you are a murderer!
And you wonder why there's an anti-environmental, anti-science backlash? How about we stop with the hyperbole and present the facts as is, without embellishment or absurd scare tactics? How many ridiculous now-provably-false doomsday scenarios were proclaimed over the past 40 years? Did you not think this would undermine public opinion at some point? Well, congratulations. People no longer trust scientists!
And somehow you got modded up to +5, even thought you did nothing to counter the argument other than emotional claims about "hyperbole". Did you even bother to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations? The facts seem to be actually as scary. Coal is this bad.
150000 people die daily. There's 6683 operating coal plants above 30MW worldwide. It is strongly debatable how many deaths can be attributed to pollution -- in China big cities there are claims it's 1/3 total deaths! China makes a good part of world's population and is about 50% urbanized, same as world's average. I don't know the methodology of the source I took the data from (or even remember the place), but their figure of 1/20 sounds like an underestimation to me. But let's take it at face value. Coal power plants have a massive share of pollution compared to other sources, not sure what's the share: for electricity generation it's 44% but I'd guess it's more for heating, steel production, etc. Let's round it to 1/2. That results in 1/40 deaths being attributable to coal, which is more than 1/44 required for the figure of one per two days per power plant.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.