(Cast of Casablanca: l-r, a waiter, Ilsa Lund, Rick, Victor Laszlo, Captain Louis Renault)
TRUMP BASHERS ARE ONCE AGAIN merrily finding ways to point the finger at the President of the USA for being true to his word. The decision to refuse to advance any further for the moment into the rather curious Paris Accord on Global Warming is seen by some as the equivalent to him personally blowing up the planet and forcing future generations to live in a world where the average temperature will increase by nearly 2ยบ Centigrade every hundred years.
NOT WISHING IMMEDIATELY to put forward any view of my own on why this might not actually be a bad idea, given the savings on the use of heating devices in the colder northern hemisphere it will imply, I would nonetheless wish to point out that there still remains no hard evidence whatsoever that these measures will do any more than modify whatever changes are taking place in the world's climate, a factor that has been a constant over time.
WE HAVE REPEATEDLY BEEN TOLD that 195 countries have signed and/or ratified the agreement, but a look at the numbers will tell a slightly different tale. About 180 of these countries do not exactly produce even a fifth of 1 percent of the overall emissions, and were perfectly happy to sign up to an agreement that basically limits car ownership to one per household and calls for restrictions on 24-hour use of air conditioning in offices. Four things which a large percentage of them do not possess anyway.
OF COURSE, DELEGATIONS FROM ALL of these countries have been flying back and forth between United Nations' meetings in New York, Durban, Kyoto, Copenhagen and Paris (and next year Marrakesh) in order to discuss these grave issues, probably making a larger carbon footprint than their entire populations would normally do in a lifetime.
OF THE 'BIG FOUR' POLLUTERS, the USA, China, Russia and India, three of them have solemnly sworn to keep to the agreement's terms and even go further, thus doing their bit to help produce a better world for everyone in the future, and thus having rich praise heaped upon them by some young ladies from one of the "green" parties on television yesterday evening. I do hope, however, that whatever "better world" India, Russia and China might manage to cobble together as the standard for the future of planet earth involves not only the clean air they are promising, but the ability for all to breathe it.
AS FOR THE MOMENT AT LEAST, in the America that these green ladies hate it is still possible to protest on the streets, still possible to be a Christian without being put in prison and tortured, possible to paint and write without censorship, possible for widows to mourn their husbands without fear of being burnt alive, for women to walk in the streets without fear of gang rape simply because no man is with them and possible to live a childhood without later finding out your father sold you to your uncle as a bride or to a businessman as a slave.
SOME MAY EVEN REACT WITH DOUBTS about whether Russia, China and India are actually telling us the truth about how they are reducing their emissions, particularly as even in the so-called "second division" of polluters, headed by Germany, with its strict laws on motor vehicle emissions, it has come to light that the good people at Volkswagen actually lied about the testing of their cars, making the whole statistical analysis issue little more than a joke.
WHAT THE POLITICAL WORLD and its media friends really do not like about Donald Trump's position is that it is real and honest. There is actually no point in doing any of this if it just serves to send politicians around the world for freebies for a few nights in expensive hotels, signing agreements that mean nothing to most of the people who sign them, and having people promise things that they not only are incapable of doing but have no intention of doing anyway.
BUSINESSMEN LIKE TRUMP MUST SEE this as a massive waste of time. And, as they sometimes say, time is money. Like the $10 billion of United Nations money raised for the "Green Climate Fund". The final destination of which has yet to be defined.
