The slavish submission to Luddite-like actions of the current occupant of the White House are more than disconcerting as we head toward a certain global isolation, now having shunned the Paris Climate Accord.
He’s been blathering and blurting about “Making America
Great Again,” that he’s standing by his voters and means well by this country,
in an “I did-it-for-the-kids” fashion.
By “kids,” in this instance, we’d be referring to those
still clinging to the faltering notion that coal-based industries will come
roaring back thanks to the current American president basically screaming “Screw
you!” to leaders throughout the world, from CEOs
to European
presidents and prime ministers to environmental advocates to American
governors and mayors.
Those “kids” would be Trump voters desperate in the
notion that no one cares about their concerns as a fading worker fighting to
retain a place and dignity amid an industry that suffered massive disruption, faces
certain change and is rapidly winding down. Their concerns are legitimate and
deserve real answers, not faux policy, particularly in light of the fact that
natural gas, more so than liberal-loved windmills, is on deck to replace coal
permanently.
Shirking a comprehensive and elegant solution such as meaningful
job retraining, where innovative pilots like
shifting miners to computer coders are proving successful, this POTUS opts
for antics. We get proclamations about job loss across sectors and he dragged out his decision for days, though nearly everyone knew
this would be his big play, despite the cajoling and convincing campaign of
movers and shakers worldwide. Perhaps another ratings ploy.
It’s even more disheartening that this man who claims to
so love his family has no compunction about sentencing his grandchildren –
hell, his own young
son, Barron – to a world of diminished health, increased disease and
amplified human misery. That’s what you get when you have rising sea waters,
pollution-choked skies and disappearing ocean life. We’re already witnessing increasing climate
refugees as nation-states are slowly being consumed by water. American ones
are following, as are cities facing mounting costs to combat the tides that
cometh. New
Orleans? Miami?
New
York? Anyone?
With all the conspiracy chatter in the air, it’d be easy
to lump this move into another instance of alleged collusion by this president with
Russian leaders and their anti-environmentalism stances. After all, Russia
loves big pipelines with all the power and dollars they deliver. But even the
Kremlin got aboard the Progress Train from Paris. Not our current POTUS,
though.
The man who screams about America’s leadership in the
world chose to turn tail and join the ranks of such visionary thinkers as Syria
and Nicaragua – the only other two nations that snubbed the accords. Even kooky
and calamitous Kim
Jung-Un signed up North Korea for the landmark global pact for humanity.
Accord signatories recognize “the need for an effective
and progressive response to the urgent threat of climate change on the basis of
the best available scientific knowledge.”
President Obama was one of those signatories. Therein
lies the ultimate cherry on top of Trump’s latest disruptive drama.
His constant gasps for greatness seem to always circle
back to a White House whiteboard edict: reverse anything Obama was for. It’s
sadly predictable, reflexive and compulsory, apparently. Reason be damned.
