Trump Gratuitously Rejects the Paris Climate Accord

[Pelle Svanslös]

As Donald Trump does his best to destroy the world’s hopes of reining in
climate change, let’s be clear about one thing: This has nothing to do
with serving America’s national interest. The U.S. economy, in
particular, would do just fine under the Paris accord. This isn’t about
nationalism; mainly, it’s about sheer spite.

About the economics: At this point, I think, we have a pretty good idea
of what a low-emissions economy would look like.

Clearly, it would be an economy running on electricity. The bulk of that
electricity would, in turn, come from nonpolluting sources: wind, solar
and, yes, probably nuclear.

What would life in an economy that made such an energy transition be
like? Almost indistinguishable from life in the economy we have now.

People would still drive cars, live in houses that were heated in the
winter and cooled in the summer, and watch videos about superheroes and
funny cats.

Wouldn’t energy be more expensive in this alternative economy? Probably,
but not by much: Technological progress in solar and wind has
drastically reduced their cost, and it looks as if the same thing is
starting to happen with energy storage.

Meanwhile, there would be compensating benefits. Notably, the adverse
health effects of air pollution would be greatly reduced, and it’s quite
possible that lower health care costs would all by themselves make up
for the costs of energy transition, even ignoring the whole
saving-civilization-from-catastrophic-climate-change thing.

The point is that while tackling climate change in the way envisaged by
the Paris accord used to look like a hard engineering and economic
problem, these days it looks fairly easy. We have almost all the
technology we need, and can be quite confident of developing the rest.
Obviously the transition to a low-emissions economy, the phasing out of
fossil fuels, would take time, but that would be O.K. as long as the
path was clear.

Why, then, are so many people on the right determined to block climate
action, and even trying to sabotage the progress we’ve been making on
new energy sources?

Don’t tell me that they’re honestly worried about the inherent
uncertainty of climate projections. All long-term policy choices must be
made in the face of an uncertain future (duh); there’s as much
scientific consensus here as you’re ever likely to see on any issue. And
in this case, uncertainty arguably strengthens the case for action,
because the costs of getting it wrong are asymmetric: Do too much, and
we’ve wasted some money; do too little, and we’ve doomed civilization.

Don’t tell me that it’s about coal miners. Anyone who really cared about
those miners would be crusading to protect their health, disability and
pension benefits, and trying to provide alternative employment
opportunities — not pretending that environmental irresponsibility will
somehow bring back jobs lost to strip mining and mountaintop removal.

While it isn’t about coal jobs, right-wing anti-environmentalism is in
part about protecting the profits of the coal industry, which in 2016
gave 97 percent of its political contributions to Republicans.

As I said, however, these days the fight against climate action is
largely driven by sheer spite.

Pay any attention to modern right-wing discourse — including op-ed
articles by top Trump officials — and you find deep hostility to any
notion that some problems require collective action beyond shooting
people and blowing things up.

Beyond this, much of today’s right seems driven above all by animus
toward liberals rather than specific issues. If liberals are for it,
they’re against it. If liberals hate it, it’s good. Add to this the
anti-intellectualism of the G.O.P. base, for whom scientific consensus
on an issue is a minus, not a plus, with extra bonus points for
undermining anything associated with President Barack Obama.

And if all this sounds too petty and vindictive to be the basis for
momentous policy decisions, consider the character of the man in the
White House. Need I say more?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/trump-gratuitously-rejects-the-paris-climate-accord.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

Does Krugman read RST?

[calim...@gmx.de]

New York Times?
And the nutty professor?

Lol ....


Max