The Ice Caps are Melting, and so is Trump’s Power.
There’s no denying that the Earth is warming at an alarming rate and human activities are to blame. Every day millions of cars race down roads, factories pump out products, and homes suck up energy. Humanity depends on fossil fuels as if they were air, and the irony here is that at the rate we are consuming fuels, there won’t be any clean air left to breathe. Rising seas, melting glaciers caps, wildfires, and dying animals are all apart of the climate change issue, something that our government and president seem to blatantly ignore.
The United States government is doing an ill job of protecting the environment, in fact, they seem to be doing the exact opposite. By pulling out of the Paris climate change agreement that was created in 2015 and ratified by over 150 nations, the U.S is directly refusing to do its part to save the planet. French President Emmanuel Macron has tried to reverse Trump’s decision to take the US out of this landmark global agreement, but like most things with Trump, it was futile. There seems to be zero chance that Trump would reaffirm Obama’s commitment to encourage reductions in America’s greenhouse gas emissions or even seek to re-establish Obama’s role as a global communicator. Trump has claimed that by pulling out of the climate act he is encouraging the economy to grow by reviving the energy business through coal mining. He also looks skeptically at international agreements because he thinks they weaken the United States. Both of these ideas are utterly incorrect and ludicrous, once again humiliating Americans across the nation. Coal is not the future of energy; renewable energy and natural gas, which is cleaner and cheaper than coal, are the future. As for doing international business, sometimes it just makes sense to cooperate with the rest of the world.
The biggest weakness in Trump's argument is that he's overlooking the main purpose of the Paris agreement: to protect the world from environmental catastrophe. There is a scientific consensus that global warming is a man-made threat to Earth, its habitats, and its people. The Paris deal represented the first time the world's governments agreed they all have a responsibility to limit pollution, but without U.S cooperation, the goal to keep the temperature from rising above 2° Celsius is seems impossible. The role of the U.S. should be a leader, pushing and coaxing other countries to do as much as possible to clean up the atmosphere everyone shares, but with Trump’s decision, it puts the U.S. on the sidelines of one of the most important issues of our time.
A more promising scenario is that someday Trump will awaken to the fact that the leaders of the world will no longer meet with him or maintain a relationship between the nations. Time after time, Trump has proven he possesses different goals and on environmental issues he has turned the United States into a pariah. We can, however, hope that the rest of the world will keep trying and pushing the market for new green technology that will achieve the cleaner energy future that Trump and the United States government seems unable to embrace.
1 comment:
In a commentary posted by Pondering Politics, author Jessica Nguyen addresses her concern with the Trump administration’s neglect of environmental protection; specifically, when Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate change agreement.
Nguyen claims that failing to cooperate with the Paris climate change agreement causes Trump to lose power and weakens the United States. The Paris climate change agreement was created in 2015 and has been ratified by over 150 nations. During its creation, former President Obama committed the U.S to this agreement, however, Trump quickly backed out of this prior commitment. Nguyen attacks Trump’s character when discussing French President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to draw the U.S back into the agreement. She stated that, as usual, efforts to change Trump’s mind are futile. This point in her argument could have been strengthened if she had cited other instances where Trump’s stubbornness prevailed, and he refused to admit his misdoing. This would substantiate her criticism of Trump’s general persona.
I agree with Jessica that Trump’s decision weakens America and makes him look ridiculous, as climate change is too obviously real to ignore or deny. As Jessica is not a climate scientist herself, I believe that had she cited data or quotes from climate change experts, her argument would have been stronger. I also believe Nguyen should have ended her commentary on a more active note with a call to action, encouraging citizens to raise their voices in favor of clean energy instead of hoping other countries will clean up our mess. Overall, I liked the argument presented in this commentary, but I think it would be helpful if more information from other sources were present.
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