On the US withdrawal from the Paris Accord

I wanted to get this up a bit sooner, but other committments and personal illness made that impossible. This is still being talked about and will undoubtedly still be a major topic for months if not years to come.

CBS News recently reported on DJT’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Accord as our president.

The US is now on the same side of the agreement as Syria and Nicaragua. Nicaragua has a decent reason for not being part of the Paris Accord: they feel the agreement is not aggressive enough. There’s at least some honor in that. Syria also has a pretty good excuse: they are dealing with a civil war right now, so yeah, it’s hard to blame them for putting environmental issues a bit further down the list.

So, the United States of America not only the only country in the world to pull out of the Paris Accord after initially agreeing to be part of it, but also the only country to do so because of a change of administration, and specifically because of a change in the ruling political party. Say what bad things you will about Hillary Clinton, but I can assure you she would not have done this. Of course, I know Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have done something so selfish and short-sighted. Withdrawing from the Paris Accord is a bad move for America; I don’t care what DJT says.

So why did DJT pull the US out of the Paris Accord?

If you don’t feel like watching/listening to the entire 33 minute, 26 second video, NPR also has an annotated transcript of the speech. You might want to look at the transcript anyway because NPR provides some important non-obvious context to some of the things DJT says. I’ll quote a couple of them here as they are real eye-openers:

DJT: I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.

Jessica Taylor, NPR: Allegheny County, which encompasses Pittsburgh, actually voted for Hillary Clinton in November […] [a]nd the city itself voted for Clinton by about 80 percent. […]

The Pittsburgh mayor also said on Twitter that even though Trump is withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, the city will continue to follow the guidelines set forth in it.

[Pittsburgh Mayor Bill] Peduto is not the only one, either […] Those reaffirming their commitment to the Paris Agreement include the mayors of Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, Philadelphia and Atlanta.

Scott Detrow, NPR: [Due to the area’s recent boom in natural gas drilling,] sticking to the Paris accord — and the Environmental Protection Agency regulations that the Obama administration set up to reach its Paris goals — would very likely have helped, not hurt, Pittsburgh.

And later on:

DJT: It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Mich.; and Pittsburgh, Pa.; along with many many other locations in our country, before Paris, France. It is time to make America great again.

Jessica Taylor, NPR: Mahoning County, Ohio (which includes Youngstown), narrowly voted for Clinton, 49.8 percent to 46.8 percent. Wayne County, Mich. (Detroit), went heavily for Clinton over Trump, nearly 66.8 percent to 29.5 percent.

While I can get that DJT is naming these cities figuratively, the reality of it is, there are a lot of major cities where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Hillary Clinton also won the national popular vote, yet the Electoral College system gave us DJT instead, and arguably failed to do its job as the last-ditch effort to keep totally unqualified people like DJT out of the White House. DJT is also dead wrong in the actual effect of the Paris Accord on Pittsburgh, which shows just how out of touch he is with what’s going on in this country.

More from the NPR transcript:

DJT: Our tax bill is moving along in Congress, and I believe it’s doing very well.

Danielle Kurtzieben, NPR: This bill has not yet been introduced.

Yeah, nice leadership, DJT. You just told a flat-out lie to the American people. It’s kind of like saying I’m “moving along” on a trip, say, back to Columbus, Ohio, when I haven’t even bought bus tickets or a hotel room yet. (For a variety of reasons, I don’t fly right now.) Sure, I’d like to do a lot more travel at least around the US if not beyond, but I’m not going to say I’m “moving along” on plans to take a trip when the very first step hasn’t been taken.

Having our president tell flat-out lies like this gives the kids in school today the idea that it’s okay to lie. Dishonesty is about as un-American as you can get, at least according to the American values I was taught. You talk so damn much about “mak[ing] America great again?” If you really do want to make America great again, start by being honest and leading by example. Oh, and learn the results of the last election, and when you pull city names out of a hat for rhetorical purposes, try not to name cities that did not in fact have a majority vote in your favor. (Yeah, I know, there won’t be too many left. That’s kind of the point.)

I could probably go on and on, but there is something else that should be noted: getting us into the Paris Accord was one of Barack Obama’s most prized accomplishments, and DJT sees the withdrawal as a largely symbolic move to reverse part of Obama’s legacy. This is perhaps the most pathetic and most outrageous reason to screw up the reputation of the entire country of the United States of America.