https://socialistaction.org/2017/06/05/trump-spurns-climate-accord/
Trump spurns Paris Climate Accord
/ 2 days ago
June 2017 Trump climate protest
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER
“We’re getting out!” President Trump declared before the press and a
knot of governmental officials who had gathered in the White House Rose
Garden on June 1. “In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America
and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate
Accord.”
Trump characterized the Accord as being “less about the climate and more
about other countries’ gaining a financial advantage over the United
States.”
He continued his xenophobic message: “The rest of the world applauded
when we signed the Paris agreement—they went wild; they were so
happy—for the simple reason that it put our country, the United States
of America, which we all love, at a very, very big economic disadvantage.”
Trump singled out in particular the “Green Climate Fund,” which he said
has been siphoning billions of dollars out of the U.S. economy, “a
massive re-distribution of United States wealth to other countries.” The
fund was intended to help underdeveloped nations move to renewable
energy and mitigate the effects of climate change. So far, the fund has
raised a total of around $10 billion from wealthier capitalist
countries, including $3 billion from the U.S. (about one-hundredth of
one percent of the U.S. budget).
According to the precepts of the Paris Accord, it will take more than
three years for the U.S. to formally withdraw from it. But Trump
indicated in his speech that he believes his announcement can help
dampen any legal challenge to the measures that his administration has
already put into place that weaken environmental safeguards in order to
ramp up oil, coal, and other extractive industries.
And what about the climate? That burning issue was scarcely apparent in
Trump’s June 1 speech. Although his address was long, rambling, and
repetitive, Trump never found a single moment to utter the words
“climate change.”
Frequently in the past, Trump charged that reports of climate change
were nothing but a hoax. But now he was silent on the question except to
cite statistics about the inability of the Paris Climate Accord to make
much of a dent in world temperatures. (Although it is true that the
goals set by the Climate Accord are inadequate to stave off an
environmental catastrophe, the data that Trump selected for his speech
distorted and exaggerated what scientists actually predict.)
Despite the untruths and bombast, Trump’s remarks received whoops and
prolonged applause from his supporters in the Rose Garden. The
atmosphere of the afternoon event was celebratory, as a military band
swung its way through “Summertime” and other jazz tunes. Many on Twitter
later compared the scene to the moments after the collision with an
iceberg when a band had played on as the Titanic sunk to its doom.
Indeed, on the same day as Trump’s address, scientists announced that
ocean warming is causing the Larson C ice sheet to break off from
Antarctica and to form an iceberg the size of the state of Delaware.
But a good proportion of Trump’s allies felt they had reason to
celebrate. It was a victory for the most reactionary wing of the Trump
forces—from fascistic advisor Steve Bannon to arch-conservative Vice
President Mike Pence—as well as for a section of the capitalist class
invested in coal mines and other extractive industries.
In the months leading up to the Rose Garden announcement, a number of
coal executives and politicians from coal-producing areas of the country
had strongly urged a pull-out from the climate pact. In a May 23 letter
to Trump from Attorney General Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia and
nine other state attorneys general, Morrisey wrote, “Withdrawing from
the Paris agreement is an important and necessary step toward reversing
the harmful energy policies and unlawful overreach of the Obama era.”
Now, after four months of hemming and hawing on the issue, their man in
the White House had finally decided to fulfill a key promise of the
populist America First platform that Trump had promoted during his
presidential campaign. And as in his campaign rallies of last year, the
president pitched his June 1 speech ostensibly toward a section of the
working class, particularly in the decayed industrial areas of the “Rust
Belt,” who have been hard hit by unemployment.
Of course, it was all a charade, a cover-up. Neither the coal barons nor
Trump himself have any sympathy for the social problems of the working
class—and much less for its unemployed members, who will be hard hit by
the administration’s budget recommendations to cut nutritional, medical,
and housing aid to the poor.
Many critics of Trump also played their role in the cover-up. Thus we
heard protestations of Trump’s announcement from a segment of corporate
industry, including major polluters like Exxon, which after decades of
suppressing information about climate change and delaying action to stop
it, now professes to favor a “clean” and “green” economy—based mainly on
fracked gas, in which the company is a major investor.
Similarly, much of the U.S. capitalist press—generally tied to the
Democratic Party—blasted Trump’s decision as being “shortsighted” in
ignoring the dire effects of climate change while isolating the U.S.
from sharing in the burgeoning market for renewable energy products. The
Washington Post took the occasion, on June 4, to extend the criticisms
to Trump’s America First policy as a whole, stating that it “substitutes
selfishness for realism. It implies that nations can go it alone.”
In a similar manner, newspapers gleefully reported that the “realistic”
pro-Wall Street grouping associated with Ivanka Trump and her husband,
Jared Kushner, had counseled President Trump to maintain “a place at the
table” in climate negotiations.
And even while Trump was still in the Rose Garden trying to explain his
decision, former President Obama issued a warning that the U.S. would
risk missing out on the economic benefits of adhering to the Accord. He
said, “The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the
nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created. I believe
the United States of America should be at the front of the pack.”
It should be obvious, however, that Obama and the Democrats, who
expanded fossil-fuel production in the United States to an unprecedented
extreme, are hardly ones to lecture on the benefits of renewable energy.
Attorney and environmentalist Carol Dansereau, in a recent article in
CounterPunch, points out: “Obama and his Party have not been climate
heroes. They’ve been climate destroyers.
“Throughout his two terms in office, Obama avidly served the fossil fuel
industry. He opened up vast new offshore areas for drilling, even in the
wake of the BP nightmare. He delivered giant leases to coal
corporations. Obama’s fracking rules were designed to reduce pollution
at fracking sites ‘without slowing natural gas production.’ And as
fracking proliferated in the U.S., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
vigorously promoted it in other countries. Tens of thousands of miles of
pipelines were constructed in the U.S. with Obama’s enthusiastic blessing….
“As a result of all this, vast quantities of greenhouse gases were
pumped into the atmosphere under Obama’s Democratic administration,
bringing us closer to environmental catastrophe.”
Other political leaders of the capitalist world, whose countries compete
in trade and investments with the U.S., also expressed their displeasure
with Trump’s pull-out. Of course, Trump made it easy for the European
leaders to mock him, with his disingenuous protests that the United
States—the wealthiest and most domineering country in the world—has been
victimized by less powerful economic competitors. With little doubt, the
major capitalist powers will try to take advantage of the fissure with
the Trump administration over the climate issue in order to put forward
their own economic interests more assertively.
If any of the pro-capitalist critics of Trump’s pull-out had really
cared about the climate, they would have made sure that the Paris Accord
had some teeth in it. They would have insisted on massive and concerted
measures that allowed each country, rich and poor, to attain 100 percent
renewable energy within little more than a decade. And steps to achieve
a reduction of world temperatures would be mandatory, not voluntary.
The recommendations contained in the Paris Accord—while arguably better
than nothing at all—will not stop the world from heading toward climate
catastrophe. In fact, the treaty serves as a convenient cushion for
world leaders and the capitalist economies that they serve. It is a
means for them to pretend that business as usual, with non-binding
promises and sluggish “market mechanisms,” can somehow avoid the worst
effects of climate change—or at least push them off into the far future.
This attitude is rife in U.S. ruling circles and in the media. It is
seen not only among Wall Street conservatives but even in the proposals
of the most liberal section of the Democratic Party.
Thus, a supposedly “progressive” bill in the U.S. Senate sponsored by
Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley, and Corey Booker would delay the
attainment of 100 percent renewable energy to the year 2050—when it
would be too late. Moreover, the proposed law specifies waiting four
years until the miniscule first steps toward that goal would be mandated.
The liberal Senators’ “100 by ’50” Act would allocate merely $150
billion per year, less than one percent of the GDP, as the maximum to be
spent in attaining their goals—nowhere near enough for the monumental
task that the country faces. It is unfortunate that leading
environmental leaders, like Bill McKibben, have decided to stand behind
this weak Senate bill.
To be sure, Trump’s withdrawal from the climate pact, and the other
anti-environmental measures taken by his administration, are crippling
blows. But what are the alternatives? The world cannot afford the
consequences of the ineffectual nibbling at the problem of climate
change by allegedly “concerned” political leaders.
The U.S. certainly can move toward the “front of the pack” (in Obama’s
misplaced words). It needs to do so by launching a massive emergency
project to put the country immediately on the road to achieving 100
percent renewable energy. The means are potentially at hand, but it will
take utilizing the entire budget and resources now wasted on the
military and on perks for billionaire investors. The project also will
require a massive reorganization of production and of society itself.
Legions of workers must be retrained and given employment and a clear
voice in repairing the earth from the ravages of capitalism and in
rebuilding society in a fully equitable, democratic, and sustainable manner.
Many in the environmental movement are coming to understand that the
present world rulers, the corporate titans and their political
representatives, who consistently put the striving for capitalist
profits above human needs, are incapable of carrying out such essential
measures.
The working-class worldwide, which suffers the worst effects of climate
change, must look to taking the reins of power into its own hands, and
to supplanting the capitalist system with a system that can fulfill the
needs of human society. That system will be a socialist one.
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June 5, 2017 in Environment, Trump / U.S. Government.
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