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Is Paris Burning? Trump vs. Climate Change, again [1]

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Date: 2025-01-23

By now, you probably know that Trump has pulled us out of the Paris Ageement, again.

Executive Order 14008 signed by President Biden on January 27, 2021, put us back in line with the rest of the signers, after Trump took us out of it in his first term, rescinding our participation in the Paris Agreement.

The agreement was officially signed by President Obama on the 29th of August, 2016. Trump pulled us out of it on June 1, 2017.

Trump's excuse then was: ".. in order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect the United States and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord. The bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, with the highest level to the United States."

He claimed that the agreement, if implemented, would cost the United States $3 trillion in GDP and 6.5 million jobs. That it would, "undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, and effectively decapitate our coal industry." Trump also criticized the Green Climate Fund, calling at a scheme to redistribute the wealth from rich to poor countries.

Decapitate the coal industry. That's not a bad thing Donald. It's time for it to be decapitated. It's the dirtiest fossil fuel of all. It creates significantly higher levels of air pollution including nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter which add to acid rain, smog and respiratory issues.

That was Trump's excuse the first time. Now Trump has pulled us out of it again after Biden had put us back in. Once again, he's done it by an executive order. I can't tell you the number, because none of them on the White House website shows a number for them, just the date that they were done.

This latest one is titled "Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements."

Almost sounds like he's trying to do a good thing, but he's not.

Oddly enough, he says that we've done a great job and protecting the environment. Then he has to veer off and go into why it's not good for America to save the planet. Then he gives his new excuse:

In recent years, the United States has purported to join international agreements and initiatives that do not reflect our country's values or our contributions to the pursuit of economic and environmental objectives. Moreover, these agreements steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people.

Then he says he'll never do anything to stifle or damage the American economy. He still hasn't gotten the message that not doing anything in combating climate change will cost exponentially more in the future to deal with it. If it's possible to in the first place.

Then he spends a good long time explaining who he's going to notify at the United Nations of his decision. And then how the Ambassador to the United Nations along with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury have to cut off all funds either already obligated or planned to be part of our obligation under the Paris Agreement.

Then he says that the US International Climate Finance Plan is terminated.

Here's where that web page was supposed to be at Whitehouse.gov for the plan. It was for the 2021 report. Impossible to find out how long Google retains Whitehouse.gov links. Did Trump just get it erased? He's done it already for complete government websites.

Here's the official Error 404 page

The plan for 2024 is still online, but I can't find 2022 or 2023 or links for them. The 2024 report budgeted not less than $987.7 million.

The Congressional copy for fiscal year 2025 says we were going to do not less than $931.9 million. If it's allocated, can Trump still stop it? He seems to think so.

The he gives a long list of related departments 30 days to report how successful they were in shutting down the US International Climate Finance Plan.

So, I went to the new Whitehouse.gov. It starts with a self-serving video of Trump, then you realize you can stop it. The only thing you can do is look at the executive orders and search. I searched for US International Finance Plan and got "no results." Everything that was on Biden's version is gone. The search is on his executive orders, and news loops you back to the executive orders as does clicking on presidential actions. Sparce.

You can go to Biden White House Archives here. A whole different world from Trump's pitch black site. On Biden's version, if you select Español, you get Trump's black Error 404 page above. AP just put out a story that Trump had eliminated the Spanish language version (it was never there for him) and that White House social media was gone. But what I didn't see was that at first, there was a button labeled "GO HOME." Then it was updated to "Go to home page." Telling Hispanics to "GO HOME" is just like Trump.

Back to the original topic. The Paris Climate Agreement. Trump has has put the world on notice that the second biggest polluter, after China, doesn't care about climate change.

We now join Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries in the world that are not party to the agreement. I hope you're proud of yourself Donald. You found still another way to make us a world pariah.

As the richest country on Earth, we have an obligation to contribute to stopping climate change. It's in our own best interests. Last year's massive hurricanes and this year's fire disaster in California are portents of things to come. Things are going to get worse if left alone. Wait till we see the cleanup bill for just removing the debris from California. Wait till we see which insurance companies go bankrupt in paying out policies. Only the rich will be able to rebuild. Where does everybody else go?

Trump thinks, once again, that we are paying dues to battle climate change. Just like his stupid assessment of NATO. He doesn't understand either process or endeavor.

The only way to get us back on track is through Congress and states to do the right thing.

How do we raise this important issue and keep it in the forefront when Trump is giving us so much else to battle?

Dangerous climate change has always been treated as something in the future, but the future is already here.

The people who lived through the fires and hurricanes understand how important it is to do something now. They should speak out in unison to keep the rest of us from forgetting what happened. The public's long-term memory is a problem. Even short-term is a problem with each day's new disaster. Maybe social media can do more than just creating trends and memes. Traditional news media follow the next big story. That's their job. But this is a big story that does affect us all. Every man, woman, child, flora, and fauna on the planet we call Earth.

The Republican Congress is too busy dealing with Trump's executive orders to fully appreciate this one. There are too many climate change deniers. The only ones that talk about it are the crazies like Marjorie Taylor Greene. If the government can control the weather, then climate change must be a hoax. We wouldn't be letting it happen if we are controlling it.

I'm wracking my brain trying to think up a way to get Trump to change his mind. I think that's impossible. If it was possible, he would be giving up on tariffs. People must be telling him somewhere, sometime, to give it up. He's already talking about 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Feb.1st. Once he has a thought in his head it never goes away. He must be right because he thought of it.

How do you get an order of magnitude change in the public mind? There's half the country that will believe climate change is a scam because Trump says so.

We can't let this issue die, because then we will. Maybe if we tell Trump that he's making the same choice as Iran.

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