Comment by bcoughlan
1 day ago
There's a lot to criticise of every country, but we're trying. The US is not trying (*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement#/media/File:Pa...
* Not aimed at all the wonderful, sane and reasonable people of the USA.
> The US is not trying
https://usclimatealliance.org/
I don't expect people outside of the U.S. to keep up on state level politics but it is worth noting that many in the U.S. are trying and given our form of government state level action isn't anything to sneeze at.
Go stand in your local Walmart parking lot and ask ten people if they know what the climate alliance is or if their state is in it. I'll wire you ten fresh bucks if you find one person who has an idea what that is,
> There's a lot to criticise of every country, but we're trying. The US is not trying (*)
I'd argue that it's a bit misleading to treat the US as a single entity for this topic.
The population is deeply divided on issues like this one.
Its basically the wealth divide, mapped to a politics divide. It easy being green- when you are rich or some rich persons descendant. Its a matter of being starved out and deprecated socially if you are poor.
The inability to perceive that ones politics is destroying ones societies poorer members and thus in retaliation they destroy the societies structure is monstrous
Hence why I said "Not aimed at all the wonderful, sane and reasonable people of the USA." I know it's not a Europe vs USA divide, just that it pisses me off that the American news and social media is talking about air conditioners instead of climate change.
>The population is deeply divided on issues like this one.
The politicians they population elect are not deeply divided, and thus can be considered a single entity that refuses to even try to do something.
Even if the US isn't part of any climate agreements, it has still made substantial progress toward achieving climate goals – yes, even under the Trump admin and much to his chagrin. You need only compare the country's emissions and green energy output from 2016 to 2026 to see it.
>* Not aimed at all the wonderful, sane and reasonable people of the USA.
I am sure both of them appreciate the exception
There is no such thing as a binding 'agreement' like this in the USA system of government. We have treaties. That have to be ratified by the Senate. The governments of the world understood this, and understood that the Paris climate agreement was an attempt by the US executive branch at the time to bluff to a hollow 'deal' (instead of creating a true binding treaty) hoping future politicians would be too embarrassed to go against it. It was incredibly disingenuous/misleading of the United States Executive branch at the time to do play politics this way outside of the actual US system of treaties. It was part of the breaking of American laws/norms by the executive that led us to where we are today (with chaos, tribalism instead of a legal system, and a breakdown of our government).
Hmm... If only there were a tangible reason why a treaty would have been impossible to get through the US Congress as currently constituted.
'we couldn't follow the law because the law's hard, instead we started the gateway for Trump by bending the rules, destroying norms, pretending the meaningless has meaning and creating pretext Conservatives could use for ignoring (first) these fake rules, but later under Trump huge amounts of the the real rules.'.
It was a bullshit agreement, and everyone knew it was, and were knowing in that what they were doing would weaken/damage politics in the USA and adherence to the rules. And they did it anyways. To no productive end but lots and lots and lots of damage.
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