by Joseph O’Shaughnessy
The President announced yesterday that he would disengage the United States from the world effort to keep climate change from completely submerging the state of Florida (which may not be all-bad in itself) and burning all our forests to the ground, not to mention a summer heat too hot to even consider playing tennis or golf.
The facts diverge quickly from those provided by Trump. Here are the facts.
- He says we will incur “legal liabilities.” Nonsense. We don’t have any more “legal liability” whatever that may mean…most people have no idea what he’s talking about…in the agreement than we do otherwise under international law. Again…probably a lie simply invented to create confusion. The agreement specifically states that there is no legal liability for any participant.
- China and India are not the leading polluters, per capita. America and China are the leading polluters per capita, and the U.S. emits more than five times more per person than a much larger and industrially more active China and 8 times more per person than India. But it sounds good to Trump because they have the largest, and in India’s case, the poorest populations. But they have huge problems that we do not have and they are making efforts to reduce their pollution problems, China, in particular, is moving very rapidly. Far faster than we are.
- Trump says it will cost $3 trillion to stay in. That’s a Koch-Brothers-Funded, Heritage Foundation think tank lie. The Koch Brothers own the largest polluting companies, have over 4,000 miles of pipeline (talk about liability!) and once paid the largest fine to the government ever for pollution. California proves that clean-air, clean-water and reduced total pollution creates more jobs, not fewer, and makes governments stronger, not weaker.
4. Trump took credit for a million jobs created since his election. The distinction here seems to be that he created these jobs over and above the efforts of the Obama administration. But the fact is that he really hasn’t done anything yet but sign a bunch of orders that have done nothing but hurt the economy. The real number of jobs since he took office is 493,000, not a million. So, the idea that he is some kind of great job creator and we should therefore listen to him on climate change—is wrong.
5. Trump claimed, though it has little to do with climate change, that the economy is “starting to come back.” That is an ignorant statement and a totally childish remark by a President. The economy began to turn around and grow by 2010. By 2012, just to be generous, the economy began to break out of the Bush Recession effects and restore jobs in good numbers and show positive economic numbers that anyone reviewing would say the economy is slowly being restored. The problem with even faster growth, as Trump knows, is that the Republican Congress fought every measure the President took to grow the economy, yet it grew (job growth grew month-over-month for 6 straight years) in spite of them. It had nothing to do with Trump. It has been recovered for at least four years, despite the best efforts of a do-nothing, Racist Republican Congress.
6. Trump: “We will renegotiate the treaty.” Wrong. This treaty cannot be renegotiated. The United States is out, left to do our own thing, out of leadership and out of participation. We are on our own to create best pollution answers on our own, with a man Trump selected who wants to close down EPA and who has battled for more pollution, not less his entire political life. He is a tool of the hardest-core of the hard core oil industry lobby.
7. “China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement.” First, the agreement doesn’t even talk about building plants. And the facts are far from what Trump said (and if you believe he is President, you must believe he is smart enough to know what is in the agreement…or he lied.) China has in fact shuttered 103 new coal plants. It has, in fact, reduced its use of coal three years in a row.
8. Trump says that the attacks on global warming are not good enough, yet he wants to withdraw so that the United States, which has all kinds of alternatives for developing industry in the coal country—but without coal—has decided to continue to give tax breaks, like the ones in the tax plan that Trump just introduced—rather than investing in the American People, many of whom live in Appalachia and many of whom of that group are as intelligent and hard working as Americans anywhere…but they just need a break. They need training and temporary financial assistance. They need a Bernie Sanders—Franklin D Roosevelt kind of President. Not a lying, cheating, perverted human being like Trump.
9. He says, quoting a study by Right Wing, anti-environmental groups, like the Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Capital Formation (both now supported by huge global oil interests and Right Wing billionaires) that participation in the global accord will cost us $3 trillion and lead to the loss of 6.5 million manufacturing sector jobs. Well, let’s analyze that. The study, because it is done to keep us out of the global agreement, assumes worst-case scenarios and then adopts the number that it assumes could happen in a worst case, as the final outcomes of our participation. That is like saying that you could have four flat tires on the way home and then calculating how long it will take you to get home…and assumes you did have four flat tires. Instead of an hour, it took you an entire day. This whole cost thing by Trump is a fabrication.
The President lying to us again. He is telling us that disastrous things are going to happen if we try to save ourselves from a disaster that is coming just as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow. We can reduce temperature rise by one degree Celsius or by one point eight degrees Fahrenheit and it may very likely not cost us a penny, if one considers the damage now being done by climate change. Our best scientists, 97%, almost ten out of ten, agree…we must try to stop this peculiar condition. Or it will ruin our planet…and soon. It is already happening to the point that we can see it and register it as legitimate. No matter what the liar Trump tells you, there is no debate. There is only action And he needs to get on board.
