BloggeRhythms

While withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord is a major step toward rebuilding the nation’s economy, the POTUS’s Rose Garden speech yesterday served another extremely valuable function. Because while taking advantage of his appearance before a world-wide audience, Trump was able to list and describe the specifics of what’s involved and illustrate the unfairness to the U.S. as other nations reaped the benefits of America’s largess. Which may be the very first time many people here and abroad learned many of the details.      

The POTUS cited considerable statistics during his presentation, such as the National Economic Research Associates prediction that energy restrictions placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million jobs by 2025, 440,000 of them in manufacturing.

“According to this same study, by 2040, compliance with the commitments put into place by the previous administration would cut production for the following sectors:  paper down 12 percent; cement down 23 percent; iron and steel down 38 percent; coal down 86 percent; natural gas down 31 percent.  The cost to the economy at this time would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000 less income and, in many cases, much worse than that.”

At the same time China will be able to increase these emissions for the next 13 years while India’s participation is “contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries.”

Getting to the heart of the matter, Trump said: “This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.  The rest of the world applauded when we signed the Paris Agreement — they went wild; they were so happy — for the simple reason that it put our country, the United States of America, which we all love, at a very, very big economic disadvantage.  A cynic would say the obvious reason for economic competitors and their wish to see us remain in the agreement is so that we continue to suffer this self-inflicted major economic wound.  We would find it very hard to compete with other countries from other parts of the world.

“We have among the most abundant energy reserves on the planet, sufficient to lift millions of America’s poorest workers out of poverty.  Yet, under this agreement, we are effectively putting these reserves under lock and key, taking away the great wealth of our nation — it's great wealth, it's phenomenal wealth; not so long ago, we had no idea we had such wealth — and leaving millions and millions of families trapped in poverty and joblessness.”

And then, the POTUS addressed the almost incomprehensible aspect of the Accord altogether, making one wonder why it was entered in the first place, whereas: “Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree — think of that; this much — Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100.  Tiny, tiny amount.  In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America — and this is an incredible statistic — would totally wipe out the gains from America's expected reductions in the year 2030, after we have had to spend billions and billions of dollars, lost jobs, closed factories, and suffered much higher energy costs for our businesses and for our homes.

As the Wall Street Journal wrote this morning:  “The reality is that withdrawing is in America’s economic interest and won’t matter much to the climate.”  

What also makes not an iota of sense is that: “The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and, in many cases, lax contributions to our critical military alliance.  You see what’s happening.  It’s pretty obvious to those that want to keep an open mind. 

“At what point does America get demeaned?  At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?   We want fair treatment for its citizens, and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers.  We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore.  And they won’t be.  They won’t be.”

Projecting on future U.S. obligations, rarely if ever discussed in the mainstream media, the POTUS said: “In 2015, the United Nation's departing top climate officials reportedly described the $100 billion per year as “peanuts,” and stated that “the $100 billion Anchor is the tail that wags the dog.”  

“In 2015, the Green Climate Fund’s executive director reportedly stated that estimated funding needed would increase to $450 billion per year after 2020.  And nobody even knows where the money is going to.  Nobody has been able to say, where is it going to?”

“Of course, the world’s top polluters have no affirmative obligations under the Green Fund, which we terminated.  America is $20 trillion in debt.  Cash-strapped cities cannot hire enough police officers or fix vital infrastructure.  Millions of our citizens are out of work.  And yet, under the Paris Accord, billions of dollars that ought to be invested right here in America will be sent to the very countries that have taken our factories and our jobs away from us. So think of that.” 

Naturally, many reactions followed the withdrawal decision, most of which naturally reflected the effect upon the party’s involved. 

One of those is Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, makers of electric cars along with energy storage services and solar panel manufacturing.  

According to Lucas Nolan @breitbart.com: “Musk took to Twitter to announce that he would be departing from all future presidential councils in protest of President Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord. He assured his followers that global warming is real and that leaving the Paris accords is “not good” for America or the world.”

“Hours later, [Ted] Cruz mocked Musk’s outrage, pointing out that he regularly travels around the country in his own private jet. If the billionaire CEO was so dedicated to reducing the world’s carbon output, Cruz snarked, he would choose to fly commercial planes rather than private ones.

“Musk has come under fire previously for his liberal use of his private jet, which he upgraded last year from a Dassault Falcon 900 B to a Gulfstream G650 ER. It was reported in 2010 that Musk took private jets to Washington on at least 12 occasions over the course of two years to lobby the Department of Energy for a loan of $465 million, which Musk’s company Tesla was eventually granted.

“Around the same time, Tesla also struck deals with the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority that made the company exempt from up to $320 million in California State sales and U.S. taxes.”

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross put the reactions of one’s such as Musk and others like him into perspective while talking to Neil Cavuto on "Your World" on Fox News yesterday saying “he expects that the global community will be upset with the U.S. withdrawing from the agreement.”

"Anytime that people are taking money out of your pocket and you make them put it back in, they're not going to be happy," Ross said. "And that's what's happening here."

He then added that the Accord isn’t “about combating climate change, but instead about transferring wealth from the U.S. to other countries.”

In summary, Ross said “that not only would the pact lead to millions of Americans losing their jobs in the coming years, but it also tasks the U.S. with reducing its carbon footprint by 20 percent.

“Meantime, major polluters like China and India are under no environmental obligation for years.”

"The only ones who are making an economic sacrifice were the United States," Ross said. 

"That doesn't sound to me like a climate accord. It simply sounds like a transfer of wealth from the United States to other countries."

And then, Bill Clinton's wife was in the news again yesterday, this time discussed by NBC’s Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, regarding MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show.”    

According to Mitchell, Clinton’s making the accusation that “Americans directed and colluded with Russia to “weaponize information” against her is “basically pointing to the Trump campaign,” a charge where Clinton “doesn’t have the evidence,” and is “drawing a conspiracy theory."

A Facebook reader of the article, Kevin Ford, commented:  

“Was your husbands impeachment "the biggest nothing burger ever"?

“When you slandered your husbands sexual assault victims, what is that "the biggest nothing burger ever"?

“Was your raping of Haiti after the hurricane "the biggest nothing burger ever"?

“Was Benghazi "the biggest nothing burger ever"?

“Was your loss in the primaries to Obama "the biggest nothing burger ever"?

“Was your loss to Trump and 16 "the biggest nothing burger ever"?

“Maybe it's you that's the "the biggest nothing burger ever"?

Thus, it seems that for the foreseeable future we all face a combination of Groundhog Day and dé·jà vu all over again when it comes to Clinton  and her detractors. Neither of which ever really showed very much originality.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios