President Trump was not invited to the Bonn Climate Conference, because earlier this year, he announced that he would pull the United States out of the Paris Accord. That means that the United States stands alone as the only country not in the Paris Accord, and by extension, the only nation in the world that officially is skeptical about climate change.
It was a clear message to the United States, and in particular, to Donald Trump and his administration.
And yet, there they are, participating as if they are still working as an active member of the world community on this issue, and pushing aggressively for dirty coal (although they will not outright admit that coal is dirty and historically a huge polluter). They are trying to forward the myth of clean coal energy, although the rest of the world is not buying it. India made a move away from coal energy, recognizing that the writing was on the wall marking the end of coal as a viable energy source, as the cons outweigh the pros. China did the same, and both are trying to step up their leadership roles once they saw the vacuum left by the de facto departure in this regard by Trump's America. Indeed, now, both India and China are seen as among the leaders on this issue, and both have committed themselves to the binding Paris Accord, even in the wake of Trump's announced departure from the accord.
So, where does that leave the United States?
What it suggests is exactly what Americans like me feared: that we are being humiliated in front of the entire world with yet another administration that doubts the seriousness, and even the legitimacy, of the science behind climate change.
And what makes matters worse is that the United States has historically been far and away the biggest contributor to the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet up. It was less than a decade ago that China overtook the United States as the most polluting nation, but it seems, rather astonishingly, that this is the one area where President Trump feels obsessed to bring America back to where it once was.
Indeed, if things keep going this way, the United States will once again reclaim the most polluting nation in the world status, and will also maintain the embarrassing, dubious distinction as the only nation that denies the science of climate change.
All of this is part of what Trump believes will "Make America Great Again."
Americans keep voting these people who believe in something called "American exceptionalism," only they use it to advance a very narrow agenda that benefits greedy corporations. Again, that is another apparently proud American tradition that the corrupt and morally bankrupt Trump administration wants to keep intact, and feels is essential to supposedly benefit the economy.
One of the problems with this is that we are following an increasingly glaring stereotype that has us looking very much like the "ugly Americans" that much of the rest of the world believes us to be. The only people who do not see the paradox of the high praise we give ourselves, while tolerating the abject failures that we are seeing, and which are, quite frankly, unique to the United States. How are we exceptional? We keep seeing excessive gun violence, yet we allow gun advocates to stifle any debate about reasonable and frankly, common sense gun control measures, and these fringe gun lunatics beat their chest and hail American freedom, almost outright scoffing at the victims of the gun violence that they have a hand in. Nowhere else in the rest of the industrialized world do they have anywhere near the mass shootings that we do, yet routinely, we hear far too many American leaders kind of shrugging ans seeming to say, "What can we do?" Tens of millions of people do not get adequate healthcare, and our prices are the highest in the world, and Republican politicians in particular want to make these statistics even more extreme due to budget constraints, even though the military budget is outrageously inflated yet remains untouched. Meanwhile, the rest of the industrialized nation - that means every single other industrialized nation in the world - has a better, fairer system that costs far less than our own. Our infrastructure seems to be crumbling, and we keep seeing politicians slash the funds for these needed works, as well as cutting benefits and the safety net for the most disadvantaged citizens because of budget concerns, even though the military budget is outrageously inflated yet remains untouched. Our education system keeps falling farther and farther behind, yet we slash funds for education because of budget concerns, even though the military budget is outrageously inflated yet remains untouched.
All of this the rest of the world sees. And Americans abroad often have a reputation for being ridiculously ignorant of anything and everything that happens outside of our own precious, nearly sacred borders, because it apparently just does not matter enough for us to deign to pay attention to what occurs in the rest of the world. We just assume, wrongly, that we are the best nation in the world, and that we can do no wrong. We invade other sovereign nations with false justifications, we continually show this outrageous and offensive ignorance towards the rest of the world, and we reveal our arrogance throughout, and this is especially being reflected with the Trump administration.
Indeed, we have done everything possible to justify the labels of "ugly Americans."
Thanks, Trump!
But more importantly, thanks to those who voted for such a man as Donald Trump, to show the rest of the world what we are truly capable of.
No wonder so many world leaders are refuting the disinterest of the United States as we shirk our responsibilities, and are going ahead trying to work things out without us. We are discrediting ourselves, and the most stubbornly ignorant among us are hooting and hollering, beating their chests and claiming victory throughout.
We deserve to lose whatever shreds of leadership status we still have under President Trump.
I personally do hope that someday, we will wake up as a nation and rejoin the world community that we seem to feel a need to stick it to at every single opportunity. In the meantime, we have been an incredibly painful and embarrassing example of what the rest of the world seeks to reject, and we are now, as a nation, a living example of what to avoid, and the dangers of looking too inwardly, towards ourselves, to the exclusion of everyone else.
Again, thanks Trump!
The Energy 202: 'Zombie' arguments made by Trump officials at Bonn climate conference By Dino Grandoni November 15, 2017:
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