President Trump has determined the US should withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. His rationale? America first, its unfair to the US tax payers, it's job killing, and we would end up being laughed at by the world.
Shall we take those reasons one at a time?
America first. ~sigh~ What does it mean to be America first in this scenario? Does it mean we should be more concerned about coal / gas power plants than we are about our citizen's health? If so, he's right, doing away with regulations, as he already was doing, will do the job. We'll continue to have a stable amount of health problems due to the pollution from these power plants and from car exhaust. And those health concerns will be covered by healthca... oh, right... well... hm...
It's unfair to US tax payers... this is really the same as America first except it more obviously identifies that we should be going forward with the regulations. The financial benefits in decreased health costs far outweigh the negatives of increased power costs and the cost of tax incentives.
Job killing. Seriously? Job killing? Without the regulations, natural gas was already putting coal out of business. What we need, if we're concerned about jobs in power production, is to get coal country to switch to solar/wind power generation. It wouldn't be easy but with the proper efforts it could be done. And what jobs would there be? Well, what do we need? We need parts construction... are you telling me we can't get companies to build construction plants in these areas? We need to build parts for solar panels, parts for power plants... how about we take the tax incentives for oil companies and switch them over to companies that build solar/wind equipment in coal country? And couldn't we create a power plant or two in those states? Renewable jobs already outpace coal jobs like nobody's business.... well... I guess like renewable business. What we need to do is get some of those renewable jobs moved to coal country and help the transition a bit more. What we don't need is to pretend that we'll bring back coal and continue to ignore the coal workers' actual needs by giving them false promises.
He doesn't want the US to be the laughing stock of the world. What exactly would it take for us to be more of a laughing stock of the world? Seriously. The world is laughing at (and crying) about us right now. They're also recognizing that the states, companies, and people of the US are going to keep to our word and do significantly more than Trump is suggesting we should do. He thinks that because the US was going to try to do what he considers to be more than other big countries, that the other countries were going to laugh at us. Here's the thing: you don't laugh at people who are being better people than others. You don't laugh at someone who has a mansion and decides that they should feed a few of the homeless nearby. You don't laugh at someone who helps his neighbors get jobs. You're impressed by them. We're already the laughing stock because of President Trump's tweets, his administration's inability to tell a single truth and the particular lies it decides are super important (such as that the crowds at his inauguration were the biggest ever, remember that lie that they kept shoving at us?).
So what does the withdrawal really mean? It means that we are further putting ourselves at odds with the world. Other than that, it means nothing. Really. The Paris agreement was essentially each country saying what it thought it could do. O.k., actually, what it wanted to do. So to say "we don't want to do what we said we'd do"... well, you could say that without withdrawing. You could say "actually, we changed our priorities" and nobody would have been surprised. Withdrawing is just withdrawing from the community. It's like if you and I went out for dinner, before hand I said I was going to be super healthy, and then we got there and I ordered a cheeseburger. You wouldn't be surprised, I am who I am after all... but no, instead, we are withdrawing... so we were going to dinner, I said I'd eat something healthy and then I said, you know what, actually, I'm going to have a cheeseburger but because I said I'd be eating something healthy and now I want a cheeseburger, I'm going to get my cheeseburger and head home and eat it alone rather than engaging in conversation with you and enjoying a night out together. Who's the laughing stock now, bozo... you're off eating dinner with 193 (or 146, depending if you're counting signers or just ratifiers) friends and I'm eating alone... so long suckers! ... God I wish I had someone to talk to.... well, at least they're not laughing at me (and my stubborn resolve to be an idiot), right?
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