Eugene Robinson: Trump pulled out of climate pact, but America hasn't
All of the leaders assembled at the Group of 20 meeting in Buenos Aires committed their nations to the fight against climate change, except one: President Trump, of course. But pay him no mind. As the proverb says, “The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.”
We don’t have to wait for history to prove how utterly, stupidly wrong Trump is on this existential issue. Current events are making the point. We have baked ourselves into an era of superlatives — the rainiest storms, worst floods, deadliest fires, most punishing heat waves. The hottest years on record. The highest levels of atmospheric carbon in thousands of centuries.
“Leaders of the world, you must lead,” the British naturalist David Attenborough said Monday. “If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”
Attenborough was speaking at a key United Nations conference in Katowice, Poland, where diplomats and scientists from around the world will spend the next two weeks working on a concrete plan for meeting the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. The aim is to sharply reduce carbon emissions, limiting human-induced global warming to non-catastrophic levels.
No one has time for Trump’s foolishness. The U.N.’s annual Emissions Gap Report, released last week, showed that worldwide greenhouse gas emissions grew by 1.2 percent last year after remaining roughly stable for the preceding three years. Emissions need to begin falling, and rapidly, if we are to meet the original Paris target of keeping the increase in average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/robinson-trump-pulled-out-of-climate-pact-but-america-hasnt/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=2565d6d0f2-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-2565d6d0f2-228635337
