Trump’s Climate-Change Sociopathy

I believe that those who are pushing us all over a cliff should be held to the highest level of accountability and punishment. There is no greater crime - truly no greater evil - than the ones which stall and obstruct our urgently needed progress to transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Pure insanity and evil. And as a mother and grandmother and an elder woman who cares passionately about all children and life everywhere, I am beyond outraged. This madness must be illuminated for what it is and stopped! - Molly

The corrupt US political system and "alternative facts" are endangering the planet; at minimum, America should be doing its part.

 

By JEFFREY D. SACHS 

President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement is not just dangerous for the world; it is also sociopathic. Without remorse, Trump is willfully inflicting harm on others. The declaration by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, that Trump believes in climate change makes matters worse, not better. Trump is knowingly and brazenly jeopardizing the planet.

Trump’s announcement was made with a bully’s bravado. A global agreement that is symmetric in all ways, across all countries of the world, is somehow a trick, he huffed, an anti-American plot. The rest of the world has been “laughing at us.”

These ravings are utterly delusional, deeply cynical, or profoundly ignorant. Probably all three. And they should be recognized as such.

After Trump claimed to be representing “Pittsburgh, not Paris,” the mayor of Pittsburgh immediately declared that Trump certainly is not representing his city. In fact, Pittsburgh has made the transition from a polluted, heavy industrial economy to an advanced, clean-tech economy. And it is home to Carnegie Mellon University, one of the world’s great centers of innovation in information technologies that can promote the transition to zero-carbon, high-efficiency, equitable, and sustainable growth – or, more simply, an economy that is “smart, fair, and sustainable.”

Trump’s announcement was rooted in two profoundly destructive developments. The first is the corruption of the US political system. Trump’s announcement was not really his alone. It reflected the will of the Republican leadership in Congress, including the 22 Republican senators who sent Trump a letter the week before, calling on him to withdraw from the Paris accord.

These senators, and their counterparts in the House of Representatives, are on the take of the oil and gas industry, which spent $100 million on campaign contributions in 2016, of which 90% went to Republican candidates. (In fact, the total was almost certainly far above $100 million, but much is untraceable.)

The second destructive development is the twisted mindset of Trump and his closest advisers. Their view, defended with “alternative facts” that have no basis in reality, is paranoid and malevolent, aimed at inflicting harm on others, or at best indifferent to harm befalling others. “The Paris agreement,” rants Trump, “handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense.”

This is nuts. The Paris accord is a universal agreement among 193 UN member states to cooperate in decarbonizing the world’s energy system and thereby head off the dangers of climate disaster, such as a multi-meter sea-level rise, extreme storms, massive droughts, and other threats identified by the global scientific community. Some of these threats are already evident in vulnerable parts of the planet.

The Paris climate agreement requires each country is to do its part with “common but differentiated responsibilities.” America’s differentiated responsibilities start with the fact that the US is, by far, the largest cumulative greenhouse-gas emitter in the world. As such, the US has contributed more to ongoing climate change than any other country. And US per capita emissions are higher than in any other large country, by far. The Paris accord does not victimize the US; on the contrary, the US has a world-beating responsibility to get its house in order.

According to data from the World Resources Institute, the US accounted for an astounding 26.6% of global greenhouse-gas emissions from 1850 to 2013. America’s population today is just 4.4% of the world’s population. In short, it is America, where per capita emissions have always been several times higher than the world average, that owes the world climate justice, not the other way around.

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