A few hours after our last meeting on Thursday, Trump announced that he would pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. This was not a surprise, but the way he did it, the timing and his justification, strengthened the resolve of the opposition. He made his announcement right after he returned from a disastrous trip to Europe, where he alienated fellow members of NATO and the G7. The leaders of Germany and France were already showing their contempt for Trump, and his climate announcement solidified and broadened the opposition. On the following Saturday, in France, India's leader Modi used the previously scheduled trade meeting to show his solidarity with Europe on Climate.
Trump's justification for the withdraw showed that he had no comprehension of what was in the Paris agreement and his position on climate change seemed contradictory. On the following Friday, Trump's handlers refused to comment if Trump no longer thought Climate Change was a hoax. By the weekend, they finally said that Trump believes that the climate is changing and pollution plays a role but elaborated no further. The attempt to make sense out of Trump's nonsense echoes his recent 'covfefe' tweet.
Here is a video by John Oliver which we will use to start the conversation:
If we have time we can ponder the deeper meaning of the word COVFEFE.
----------------------------------- Updated 6/9/17 --------------------------------------------
Here are the other videos shown at the meeting:
- President Trump's First Overseas Trip
- Macron takes a stand against Trump
- France & India Cooperate In Fighting Climate Change
- Corbyn accuses May of 'subservience to Donald Trump'
- Why Theresa May didn't sign letter condemning Donald Trump over Paris Climate agreement
Local meeting report: https://patch.com/maryland/columbia/md-residents-show-support-environmental-protections-hoco-town-hall
ReplyDeleteTwo Republican governors (Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Phil Scott of Vermont) have joined the climate coalition. They've set an example for Hogan.
ReplyDeleteThis comment pertains to the meeting on 06/27/17.
ReplyDeleteJust Foreign Policy
Dear Doris,
Urge WaPo and NYT to review policies on Russia reporting.
Take Action.
Three prominent CNN journalists resigned on June 26 after CNN was forced to retract and apologize for a story linking a Trump ally to a Russian investment fund under congressional investigation. The CNN story had been based on a single anonymous source. An internal investigation by CNN management found that some standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published. [1] Buzzfeed reported that CNN has now imposed strict new publishing restrictions for online articles involving Russia. [2]
But as Glenn Greenwald noted at The Intercept, the problem is not limited to CNN:
"CNN is hardly alone when it comes to embarrassing retractions regarding Russia. Over and over, major U.S. media outlets have published claims about the Russia Threat that turned out to be completely false - always in the direction of exaggerating the threat and/or inventing incriminating links between Moscow and the Trump circle. In virtually all cases, those stories involved evidence-free assertions from anonymous sources that these media outlets uncritically treated as fact, only for it to be revealed that they were entirely false.
Several of the most humiliating of these episodes have come from the Washington Post... In sum, anything is fair game when it comes to circulating accusations about official U.S. adversaries, no matter how baseless, and Russia currently occupies that role. (More generally: The less standing and power one has in official Washington, the more acceptable it is in U.S. media circles to publish false claims about them, as this [3] recent, shockingly falsehood-ridden New York Times article about RT host Lee Camp illustrates; it, too, now contains multiple corrections.)" [4]