The blindness of Trump's oil-flooded eyes — rendering the United States the only nation on the planet to reject the Paris climate accord — shouldn't blind us to the fact that the rest of the world is also struggling to transition away from fossil fuels
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Friday's blunt warning got more attention than most stories about climate change — our slow-motion disaster that never breaks through the 24/7 news cycle of fast-moving ones — but yet the overwhelming reaction was still cynicism and sad resignation, like a cancer diagnosis for a patient that refuses treatment. Maybe 13 government agencies understand the world is on fire, but the 14th and the only one that matters — the White House — remains in deep denial. In a statement accompanying the Black Friday news dump, the White House especially "blamed" the Obama administration for beginning work on a report that was "largely based on the most extreme scenario."
Climate denial is as deeply ingrained in the Trump brand as overpriced steaks and diploma scams — because anything that annoys pointy-headed liberals must be good, because it was something he could lord over Hillary in West Virginia "coal country," and because slippery oil barons and even slipperier Middle Easterm sheikhs are Donald Trump's kind of people. Seeing the devastation of Paradise firsthand isn't going to change his mind — "I want great climate," he babbled afterword — nor is a 1,656-page egghead-scientist report. Instead, Trump recently ridiculed climate science on Twitter.
Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2018
But what's really so frustrating, if not stunning, about the Trump White House's denial on climate is that all you have to do is watch cable news for a couple of hours — which is pretty much how the president spends his "executive time" every morning — and you can see the ways that oil and other fossil fuels soak both our domestic and foreign policies, in ways that are increasingly poisonous. There will be blood? — to echo the foreboding title of a popular Hollywood movie about early 20th century oil exploration. It's already here.
The most obvious cry for help on global warming is coming right now from Northern California, where the fast-moving Camp Fire turned entire subdivisions in Paradise into grim rectangles of grey rubble in a matter of hours, as those surrounded by flames frantically called and texted their family members to say goodbye. The death toll stands at 85, but officials still don't know how many of the hundreds still listed as missing actually escaped and how many are dead amid the ashy ruin. Experts widely agree that man-made climate change and hotter temperatures have severely exacerbated California's years-long drought, leaving a whopping 129 million dead trees and dry brush that serve as kindling for each new spark.
And yet Trump continues to worship at the altar of 20th century fossil fuels, and not just here at home where the president's political romance with both struggling Appalachian workers and billionaire energy barons has inspired horrific policy decisions to bring back coal-fired power plants. In the Middle East, there has been blood because the White House has thrown all-in behind the murderous Saudi Arabia regime of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, or MBS — even after the CIA confirmed that MBS ordered his goons to murder and dismember an American resident, Jamal Khashoggi, who was a columnist for the Washington Post.
The United States under Trump has essentially been an accessory to this act of barbaric immorality — there are even reports that we advised MBS on the American way of damage control — because the president still believes that we can't live without the Saudis, or perhaps that he can't get reelected in 2020 without low-priced crude from the Persian Gulf. He tweeted last week on the recent global drop in oil prices and concluded: "Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let's go lower!"
Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2018
Frankly, I don't think America can get any lower than condoning the killing of a journalist — and thus an attack on all press freedom — by the butcherous Saudi regime. But the blindness of Trump's oil-flooded eyes — rendering the United States the only nation on the planet to reject the Paris climate accord — shouldn't blind us to the fact that the rest of the world is also struggling to transition away from fossil fuels and into safer renewable fuels such as solar and wind power.
Just a day after the devastating U.S. climate assessment broke, the front page of the New York Times reported that Asia's growing giants like India and even China (despite its leadership in solar power) continue an opioid-level addiction to burning coal. And what of world leaders like France's Emmanuel Macron who've pushed climate-change-busting policies like higher taxes on fuel? On Saturday, flaming barricades and violent clashes pockmarked Paris' historic Champs-Elysées as working-class French citizens, some aligned with growing right-wing movements, protested those taxes. This is hardly a surprise to experts who've long predicted that failure to move early and decisively on the climate crisis would ultimately lead to widespread political unrest.
Will there be more blood? Perhaps, but there's also a few tiny rays of hope breaking through the thick smog that seems to be enveloping the world right now. In Washington, Trump will be confronted for the next two years by a Democratic-led House chock full of new members who ran unbeholden to Big Oil and with ambitious ideas for a transition away from fossil fuels. The cynical view is that with Trump in the White House and Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader, this energetic new climate caucus will be tilting at, and not with, windmills. But here's a more optimistic take: The House moves on fossil fuels will set a clear agenda for the future, heighten the contradictions with the GOP's anti-science denialism, and make 2020 a referendum on climate action.
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