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Trump's Officials Suggest Re-Negotiating The Paris Climate Accord (msn.com)
Slashdot reader whh3 brings surprising news from the Wall Street Journal. "Trump administration officials said Saturday the U.S. wouldn't pull out of the Paris Agreement, offering to re-engage in the international deal to fight climate change, according to multiple officials at a global warming summit." Today an anonymous reader writes:
Even an official White House statement in response to the article insisted only that the U.S. would withdraw "unless we can re-enter on terms that are more favorable to our country." On Sunday White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster "said President Donald Trump could decide to keep the U.S. in the Paris Climate Accord if there is a better agreement that benefits the American people," according to ABC News, while CNBC reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also "said the United States could remain in the Paris climate accord under the right conditions. 'The president said he is open to finding those conditions where we can remain engaged with others on what we all agree is still a challenging issue.'"
At the core this was nothing but a redistribution of wealth out of the US with no real guarantees the cash would be used to actually preserve the environment.
NAFTA and the Paris Climate Change Accord are not really comparable. NAFTA is a legally binding treaty with enforceable obligations on all parties. PCCA is symbolic, and countries can set their own goals, with no consequences for failure to abide by them. So "pulling out" of PCCA just means that America will no longer need to make up fake goals. I can't even imagine what there could possibly be to "renegotiate" since there is (almost) nothing there.
You don't negotiate with Trump, unless he's outright giving ground just to spite his own side. Not because he's a 'genius negotiator' - but because his future decisions have almost no relationship with his previous promises.
Sure, you might make an agreement with him and get lucky, but it's all a roll of the dice - and there's no benefit to playing. The only reliable result would be uncertainty injected between you and the other folks involved in any agreement you're letting Trump into.
If he wants to make outright concessions on his own, cool - but no negotiating down any terms or disrupting any of what you're doing in the name of cooperating with him.
The only way to do that is to cut emissions ... and even then there is a large time lag ... it will take years to reverse what we have done.
it is a huge fuck you to the world though. The Paris Accord is the first time in history when all countries in the planet acknowledged climate change as real and proposed measurable goals to fight it. Until the US dropped out there were exactly two countries outside the accord - Syria, undergoing civil war, and Nicaragua, who claims the accord doesn't do enough to fight climate change.
But still - the line about "renegotiating" the accord was uttered by Trump himself when he announced the decision: "I don't want anything to get in our way. The US will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or a really entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers. (...) We're getting out, but we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that's fair," Trump said. "If we can, that's great. And if we can't, that's fine."
The treaty has already been watered down just to get the US on board - and now Trump wants a better deal? Fuck you! Time for an embargo on US goods.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
It's kind of appalling that the US is only willing to do anything if it is forced to with punishments for failure beyond just naming and shaming.
I think people misunderstand what Paris was about, what it managed to do. The idea was to build political capital for governments to implement climate change reduction. Responsible countries have done that, setting goals and often exceeding them. China and many EU countries are leading the way, and profiting from it too. There is a massive boom in renewable, clean energy at a time when the US is trying to build up coal again.
By not joining the PCCA the US has screwed itself. Screwed itself out of an opportunity to create jobs and technology, screwed itself out of trade that will instead go to countries which are helping each other meet their environmental commitments. If a company can buy a part from the US or from Germany, but the German one has a smaller CO2 footprint and this the final product will too, which has various benefits like tax breaks and lower environmental levies, which one are they going to pick?
Of course, in reality many US companies will be forced to adopt things like RoHS 2 regardless of what the US government does, or lose a lot of sales.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What's the point of having measurable goals if there's obligation to meet any of them. I can intend to solve world hunger by next Thursday and ask you to contribute money to help me do so, but I can't see how you would trust me with any money if I were also to say that all of my proposed goals or targets are non-binding and I'm not technically obligated to spend any of the money on solving world hunger in the first place.
Nicaragua is probably the only country who is on the money in all of this. The Paris Accord won't actually accomplish anything beyond being some feel-good self-masturbatory act that serves as a good photo op. It's just Kony 2012 on a worldwide stage. Get a group of countries to agree to some binding resolutions that might make a difference. They don't even need to be difficult ones either. Something as simple as a binding promise to stop all government subsidies or tax breaks to oil companies would help make alternative energy sources more economical even if the government does nothing to fund them.
I mean I'm sure that letting the universe know that we as a planet stand united against global warming or some shit like that is sure going to stop climate change in its tracks. Probably get it just shaking in its boots to the point that the temperatures recede a good half degree or so.
So "pulling out" of PCCA just means that America will no longer need to make up fake goals.
Then what will Trump and the Republicans do? Fake goals are, apparently, all they're good at.
You can't, honestly, expect them to actually govern? </politically-biased-rant>
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
There was absolutely no reason to withdraw from it, and some republicans are only now starting to realize this.
Paris Climate Agreement needs no renegotiation because it's non-binding, it's been criticized for asking too little too late, it was a political and diplomatic move without any negative consequences - other than being a symbolic gesture that doesn't really change much.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion...
https://www.newscientist.com/a...
http://www.npr.org/sections/13...
Even worse, a smart politician could use it in their favor right now. Even if the objective isn't met, it's far into the future, so he/she could just say that his/her political party did everything they could during their term to get there, but other administrations endded up not following it properly. It's the perfect excuse for a political party to return to power when things gets more dire in the future.
What happened there was the usual Trump blindness when trying to undo everything Obama did that got some attention under his administration on the premisse that everything he did was bad in some way, stupid campaign promisses filled with misinformation and vilification, plus Trump being an idiot that only listens to cospiracy theory alt-right channels.
Worst of all: if Trump just kept quiet and didn't step back from the agreement, the US would probably hit it's target anyways. Governments are not leading the way on this - the global economy is.
The economy is moving independent of governmental interference towards renewables, generating less garbage, developing electric cars, closing down fossil fuel power plants, and a bunch of other stuff. We're moving away from fossil fuels because it became economically feasible and attractive to do so, from an international standpoint.
Stepping down from the accord just painted the US as a country to be sidestepped for doing all sorts of businesses that will be moving tech towards cleaner goals - which is why so many US corporations were quick to announce they'd keep following the accord regardless of what the government is talking. It's not because those corporations are "good" or environmentaly friendly or some bullshit. It's because the global economy right now is aligned with those goals.
Notice how many news we hear these days about China's progressive moves towards clean energy. That's because China is trying to get the worldwide leadership on that particular topic. Trump just made it this much easier for another country to assume the position of global leader in a topic that lots of people are paying close attention to.
But now the damage has already been done. With or without renegotiation, it doesn't matter. Republicans can either be outright denied a renegotiation, which will continue looking bad for US in general, or they can get the agreement renegotiated which will keep them on a list of countries that are still in denial of a problem that needs firm stances, not because it's some charity or plead for help from another country, but because of their own interests.
What's the matter, little Trumpist snowflake, butthurt that freedom of speach applies to everyone and not just to little alt-right alternate-facts-loving shitfucks like you ?
You don't negotiate with Trump, unless he's outright giving ground just to spite his own side. Not because he's a 'genius negotiator' - but because his future decisions have almost no relationship with his previous promises.
This, except Trump doesn't have a "side" to spite, except his own. The only thing he cares about, tweets about, speeches about, or discusses with people is how popular he perceives himself. Now that the ride on the Right and the GOP is losing steam, Ryan and that little turtle-head McConnell refusing his calls (Mitch? Mitch? Are you there, Mitch? It's ME! President Trump! The President, you little turd! Goddammit, I can hear you breathing into the phone, you no-neck amphibian!), so maybe it's time to give the Left a try. I mean, shee-itt! He threw the white supremacists a bone for Charlottesville, and what did it get him? Nothing but headaches, damn ingrates, and Bannon being a total two-faced asshole. Even Fox News turning sour, you'd think they'd see the fair-and-balance of it. How can you get a good round of golf in with all that going on?
So, why not go 180 on the Paris Accords? Why not go 180 on the debt ceiling? Why not go 180 on the illegal.. uh.. Dream Kids? Shit, if it goes well, and the mean old liberal fake-news start throwing rose petals at him and call him a hero, maybe he'll "re-negotiate" some other stuff, too.
Take a lesson, liberals. With Trump, everything's for sale, for the right price. A front-page Sunday New York Times "Best President Ever", and it'll be "Wall? What Wall? I'd never build a Wall with Mexico, that would fuck up NAFTA!"
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Good news! This will help the children, along with everyone else,
That's what you want me to believe. You haven't done deep economic analysis on the topic, and you probably haven't even investigated it enough to figure out what mitigations will actually hurt the children more than they'll help them.
Every mitigation has a cost: at what point is the cost more expensive than the problem it fixes? You don't know, and your comment was entirely made from ignorance. You'd be a good politician though, so keep it up.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."