It happened in the Rose Garden this past week. President Trump announced to the World the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement entered into — some say illegally — by President Obama several years ago. The Paris Agreement is a Treaty that Constitutionally requires a 2/3 approval of the Senate vote to be ratified. Obama used an Executive Order for U.S. inclusion in the Agreement, bypassing the Senate. Then “Candidate” Trump promised during the 2016 campaign he would (if elected) take the U.S. out of the Agreement. His reasoning? It would cost millions of U.S. jobs and a $2 Trillion hit in GDP over the next few years. All that while the Treaty as a volunteer agreement between countries has no requirements for any countries to comply with their commitments in Emission Reductions they sign up for. The U.S. reduction requirement would begin immediately while the largest polluting country on the planet — China — would have no reduction commitment until 2030, therefore bypassing the financial lashing that would come for them to attack their massive emission problems in existence today.
The Press, liberal politicians, and government leaders around the World (primarily from Europe) are going crazy, attacking the President voraciously because of his withdrawal move today. One CNN reporter actually said, “President Trump resigned the United States as the #1 Nation in the World today.” The noise from the Left for his action has even drowned out the clamor from the Left about alleged collusion in the election between Russia and the Trump Campaign/Administration.
In the midst of the hullabaloo today, many forget there was ANOTHER international treaty from a while back that the U.S. also withdrew from amid almost identical circumstances with almost identical reactions from the Left: the Kyoto Accords. President George W. Bush pulled the U.S. out of that 1997 treaty in 2001 that had been signed by then Vice President Al Gore, arguably Earth’s greatest Global Warming/Climate Change Advocate alive today (in addition to being the self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet).
Candidate Trump talked to Middle Americans during his campaign and listened to their cries about what the Paris Agreement would do: terminate millions of jobs in the energy sector already beset with horrible cuts and even closings of coal and steel plants throughout the Midwest and Northeast. Trump’s opponent during the campaign actually said she would eliminate the coal industry entirely if elected. President Obama’s EPA ratcheted up energy emission standards so high that numerous coal plants were forced to close, coal companies literally shut the doors, which put hundreds of thousands of Americans on the street looking for work. American voters made it clear to now President Trump the nation cannot afford the jobs that would be lost nor the $2 Trillion hit to the Economy if we entered that Agreement.
International reaction was swift and severe following Trump’s announcement, with many leaders accusing the President of turning his back on the world:
Let’s look at World leader reactions to the 2001 U.S. rejection of the Kyoto Accords by President George W. Bush:
1. A European diplomat called the hard-line attitude depressing and marked a significant divergence between European and US views on how to deal with the problem. It cast a pall over an international meeting in Bonn in June, where a fresh attempt is to be made to establish a consensus.
2. European leaders had been hopeful that the 1997 treaty could be salvaged after U.S. EPA Commissioner Christine Whitman came to the G8 environment summit in Trieste and signed a joint statement on March 4 which said: “We commit ourselves to strive to reach agreement on outstanding political issues and to ensure in a cost-effective manner the environmental integrity of the Kyoto protocol.”
3. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, privately told European ambassadors last week that the US considered the Kyoto accord “dead”, but the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, had hoped to convince Mr Bush not to abandon the agreement altogether when the two leaders meet today in Washington.
4. “It is important that the US accepts its responsibility for the world climate. They are the biggest economy in the world and the heaviest energy consumers,” Mr Schröder told the Los Angeles Times.
5. Amy Kreider, director of the global warming campaign at the US National Environmental Trust, said: “This is no way to conduct policy.
“It looks like amateur hour at the White House as regards foreign policy.”
So naturally everyone — both in media and in government — looks back at 2001 as a benchmark of U.S. pollutant emissions increase to see just how costly pulling out of the Kyoto Accords was. In 2001 the world knew factually that the U.S. would see emissions rise at catastrophic levels after Bush’s actions. In fact, exactly the opposite is true: U.S. emissions are NOT at 2001 levels, but are at 1992 levels while the Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. has increased by 80%!
What that means is that though the energy sector of the U.S. economy has soared in those several decades including a massive increase of United States population (which automatically generates new carbon emissions), the U.S. through its private sector/government partnerships and cooperation have seen a huge effective decline in carbon emissions without paying a dime for doing so!
But the Left doesn’t like facts and historical precedence. And they pretty much believe Americans don’t remember and are not sophisticated enough to research what has happened in the past. So the Left did what the Left always does:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer: “President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement is a devastating failure of historic proportions,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “It’s now crystal clear President Trump is comfortable both ceding the moral high ground and the economic upper to hand to countries like China, and endangering the future of our planet.”
Former President Barack Obama: “A year and a half ago, the world came together in Paris around the first-ever global agreement to set the world on a low-carbon course and protect the world we leave to our children,” Obama said in a statement after Trump’s announcement. “Even in the absence of American leadership; even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: “Pulling out of the Paris Accord defies the overwhelming support for action from credible scientists, the governments of 194 different countries and many religious groups,” Pelosi said. “Faith leaders from Pope Francis to the evangelical community have urged us to act to preserve the beauty of God’s creation.”
My Thoughts:
- When President Bush pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto Accords, the U.S. had no intention to just continue to grow in manufacturing, energy, shipping, etc. randomly increasing its CO2 emissions in total abandonment of environmental issues. The Left thought then that’s exactly what Bush 43 would allow. But the United States in its fiduciary capacity as a world leader on environment issues continued to push forward with environmental measures to reduce carbon gases, grow alternative energy sources, and reduce pollution overall. And it worked! It worked, however, without the U.S. being bound to foreign entities who had separate thoughts and ideals about what environmental (then called “Global Warming”) responsibilities countries in the Kyoto Accords would need to assume for the common good. And the Kyoto Accords would have made the U.S. accountable to others for its own environment issues — something totally unacceptable to the President.
- As the Left both domestically and internationally cry “Crucify him, Crucify him!” as loudly as they can, all day every day, President Trump took almost identical measures using all the ancillary information surrounding the Paris Accords as they pertained to the U.S. and its international environment responsibilities and as President Bush felt it was better for the U.S. to NOT succumb to the cries of the environmental Leftists while keeping in place its very successful environmental measures and continue through private and public innovation continue the development of new and better ways to positively impact CO2 emissions at every level in the U.S.
- The “crazy” left media along with leftist U.S. politicians act like Earth is going to become one giant ball of fire in a couple of years because of leaving the Parish Accords. The vitriol in the news has become laughable. Why? Because NONE of their concerns are real, true, or accurate!
- Their reason for the attacks have NOTHING to do with the Paris Accords. Their attacks are about one thing and one thing only — attacking Donald Trump’s credibility and ability to serve as President, and in doing so hopefully de-legitmizing his administration.
- Once again American Socialist Lefties of every group have turned their backs on true Americans who all love the country and desperately want it to succeed in every way — especially environmentally. But they realize that even if Man can destroy Earth (which there is no proof of) in the United States through concerted efforts by most people we are right now making our environment cleaner and getting cleaner than ever going forward. Those Americans do NOT live in the big cities on both coasts and in between. Those Americans live in the Heartland, farm, are energy workers, school teachers, small business owners, and mostly conservative in their views. They are the ones who elected Trump! Why would they — who represent the majority of America — feel it necessary to wholesale control of the American economy to a few Globalists selling their story with a false narrative? I’ve said it before: Americans are NOT stupid!
So was last week a bad week on Earth for the human race as President Trump chose to pull away from the Obama loss of U.S. trillions of $$ of taxpayer income in pulling us out of the Parish Agreement? It seems a bit foolish to roll the dice on the
“possibility” of spending trillions of dollars in a “deal” while sacrificing millions of American jobs for merely the “hope” of reducing the average temperature by less than 1 degree…….by the year 2099!!
My vote? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.“
