Friday 2 June 2017

we’re going to have the cleanest air—we’re going to have the cleanest water

To lump the outliers of the Paris Climate Accords in one basket is a real unkindness to Nicaragua and Syria, given that the former objected to the goals set forth were far too modest and the Central American country is aiming for no less than a ninety percent energy sourced in renewable, sustainable resources within the next decade, and the latter was in the midst of a protracted civil war with no functioning government (the same could arguably be said for the third party) and had no delegation to send.
Intent on keeping at least one campaign promise that panders to his base at the disdain for ever other living creature on the planet, Dear Leader proclaimed that he was elected to represent the “citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris” as he announced that after weeks of playing coy about it his decision to reassert American sovereignty by breaking with the pact.  Poor Pittsburgh. Much as is the case with Brexit (Castle Mayskull is the only other world leader not to join the chorus of unanimous dissent over Dear Leader’s bad choice), the divorce proceedings are messy and the US won’t be released from its obligations until 2020—though a frightening amount of damage could be affected domestically by undoing decades’ worth of environmental regulations and protections.
America has no cachet in the world under this tin-pot regime that advocates wilful ignorance and is completely credulous in saying that global-warming is a Chinese conspiracy meant to steal American jobs, and whatever sort of race-to-the-bottom that the US is hoping to spark with its myopic, greedy, grubby recalcitrance—the rest of the world is not having it: Parisians and Pittsburghers are redoubling their efforts for environmental reform, scientists and other subnational jurisdictions and even businesses are committed to the goals outlined in COP21 despite what Dear Leader is advocating. We ought to not need to expend extra energy and effort just to neutralise or contain the arrogant and dangerous stupidity of Dear Leader and his criminal posse of free-loaders, but tyrannies will topple perhaps this was the transgression to trigger the regime’s overthrow and to inspire some real and positive change for our environmental stewardship.