Thread: Trump's climate policies put China in charge of our future

Trump's climate policies put China in charge of our future

By Mark Lynas
Updated 3:25 PM ET, Tue March 28, 2017

Mark Lynas is a writer on climate change, and visiting fellow at the Alliance for Science at Cornell University. The opinions in this article belong to the author.

(CNN)In a rational world, people would take climate change more and more seriously as real-world evidence for its damaging effects mount.

The dying of the Great Barrier Reef; the crippling, ongoing drought in East Africa; the thawing of Arctic ice. All of these should make us more determined to tackle the problem at the source by reducing our worldwide carbon emissions.

But we don't live in a rational world. Tracking the rapid rise in global temperatures has been an equally fast increase in the politically motivated denial of the basic science of climate change.

This process of anti-science posturing has now reached its nadir in the determined effort by the Trump administration to unravel former President Barack Obama's efforts to tackle global warming.

The Trump administration's war on science is fast becoming its most destructive attribute. We will never be able to tackle climate change if we continue to live in a post-truth age, where factual accuracy plays second fiddle to political ideology.
Hundreds of thousands of scientists and science supporters are expected to take to the streets April 22 in a worldwide March for Science. The fact that this mobilization is needed at all speaks volumes about our terrifying global predicament.

Before his election, Donald Trump tweeted that he believed climate was invented by the Chinese to undermine US manufacturing. This absurd conspiracy theory would be laughable if it had not come from someone who is now the world's most powerful man.

Accordingly, his administration is now aiming to dig and burn more coal from federal lands, force through controversial oil pipelines such as the Dakota Access and Keystone XL, relax fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and revoke Obama's Clean Power Plan.

Partly these measures are symbolic, a sop to the deep Republican loathing of liberal environmentalism in America's culture wars. Coal is no longer the cheapest option for electricity generation, and the clean energy revolution led by the combination of renewables and super-cheap fracked gas is beginning to look unstoppable.

But symbolism is important, particularly if China takes its cue from Trump's America that the era of carbon controls is over. This is what really matters to the future of the planet.

Obama's most important climate legacy was the US agreement with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping that in return for American carbon reductions, China would seek to peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Whether or not China continues to aim for this goal -- now that the United States has made clear its intention to fail in its side of the bargain -- is uncertain. The answer to that question will decide whether the globe faces a future of catastrophic climate devastation associated with global warming of 3 degrees Celsius or higher, or a more manageable warming of 2 degrees or below.

After years of stalling, China now finds itself in the unenviable position of being world leader on climate change, thanks to Trump's willfully blind irresponsibility.

Yes, we must all March for Science on April 22, and we must all fight to defend scientific truth and cut our own carbon budgets. But whether these collective efforts succeed or fail in curbing disastrous global warming will ultimately be decided in Beijing, not Washington.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/28/opinio...china-opinion/

I think Trump will do some amazing things for our environment. But first, he must fix the economy, bring our factories back home, help our major and small manufacturers expand here at home, create good jobs with benefits, raise wages, fix our bad trade deals, and get this economy on track again at a level that supports our population. Many environmental regulations as other laws and regulations as well but environmental especially have stymied our manufacturing base.

Our country can not support itself without our manufacturing base so it can't be sacrificed to support the environment without enormous damage to our financial situation and the lives of most Americans affected and harmed by it. Once we bring the factories back, get everyone back to work and start making money again as a nation, then there will be things we can do, smart things, things that actually work, and can function and operate on their own as legitimate stand-alone energy business enterprises.

I think you're judging before you understand the mission and goal of the policy that's part of a much larger agenda, and that is not an intellectual approach to solving problems and fixing our country. Big Picture. Zoom out so you see both the forest and the trees that comprise it.

Anyone who is willing to think back, will realize we do have climate change. There is no doubt.

When you have been able to grow a garden without irrigation for 15 years - but fast forward 10 years and you must irrigate every day - same area.

When the winds are constant and high = and they weren't before.

Yes, we are having climate change. Is it just cyclical? Something that happens to the earth? I think that is very possible.

We do have pollution of our air, our water, our soil. We do have to be honest and admit that.
Did pollution have anything to do with climate change? It's possible - but the 'global warming' people's solutions do not make sense.

They want to 'tax' us out of pollution. But if you get extra carbon credits, you can sell them. I'm not sure how that is helping.

The global warming silliness is - just my thinking - a way to control people, tax people, make Wall Street and other corporations very wealthy. It is also a way to take the emphasis off the fact that we are really polluted our water, air and soil. They want the perceptions to be, we are creating 'global warming', not destroying the things we actually need to survive.

All the while they take the light off pollution, they are making billiions.

I would like to see manufacturing come back. We certainly do have to, simply have to, be able to supply ourselves with the minimum necessities. Otherwise, we are not an independent nation. When someone else is supplying your necessities, they control you.

But it needs to be clean. Corporations need to be made responsible for their actions and the EPA needs to be scrapped in favor of something that really works.

Do we want to live as the chinese do with face masks in public to avoid the polluted air? It was good to get them on board, they always want to look like they are the best at everything. They have tremendous pollution problems, polluted waters, people living along the waters die everyday from cancers. Their rivers & air quality are appalling. No regulations leads to disaster. Their pollution also blows across the Pacific.

Weather has changed considerably. Winter in the north is cold for a spell than 30degrees higher for a spell. Bacteria, pollens, fungi, mosquitos, larvae do not die off with that pattern. They require weeks of freezing temps which was the norm for Jan/Feb - no more. Canada had 6mths of winter, only 3 months now. There is fauna growing they never saw before. Why not clean up the air & water pollution & prevent it worsening by using cleaner technologies - a no-brainer unless you are a stock holder in oil, gas, mining.

Everything is going to be okay. There are terrible distortions in our economy that Trump is trying to fix and will fix. Take California, their Chamber brags about their exports that creates high-paying jobs for one million Californians. Yet, there are over 12 million Californians on Medicaid. We have to bring our jobs home, to do that we've got to fix what ran them off. Most people are led to believe it's cheap labor, it isn't, it taxes and regulations. Taxes affect their gross earnings and regulations impede their ability to do a lot of things they should be able to do. Cheap labor only impacts 10% of their production costs which would be about 5% of their gross earnings. So they didn't leave the US over labor costs, they left because of 35% to 40% income taxes on their net earnings and billions in regulatory costs, and no not just environmental regulations, all regulations.

The distortions are hard to explain in a simple post, but they do exist, they are huge, and they have to be made right to fix our country.

I know everyone wants to keep making progress in all of our important areas, and environmental protection is certainly one of them. But some of these problems we have like going bankrupt as a country must be solved so we have to protect the environment in ways that don't bankrupt US. I think people still don't understand how dire our situation is. It's very dire. It's precipice dire. This is our one chance to fix it and save ourselves, because there won't be another Donald Trump.