Trump Paris Meta-Decision

[Final-Fan]

robzo100 said:

Flilix said:

America doesn't need to be #1 in everything, but they've always been one of the most modern, civilised and educated countries, so of course people want to keep it like that.

It's not just the US by the way, but in a lot of countries. Here in Belgium, we also want to be at least in the top 10 for a lot of things. For example, last week I read a news article about the global raking of gay rights. It said that we could do more to improve gay rights, since we went from the 2nd to the 4th place.

That's exactly the rhetoric I'm talking about, just emphasizing the point even though I see you've acknowledged it.

America is wealthy but a lot of it is because we've set our Capitalistic standards higher than most countries, and you know what? - That creates problems like inequality (income, socially, etc.) weakened traditions(religion taking a backseat), dilutted family structure, etc... things that other countries don't have to deal with. So we are #1 in some things only at the cost of not being #1 in other things. If people akcnowledged this they would have a less idealistic view of America and therefore less idealistic standards that make people freak out when we don't pay 100 Billion for the Paris Accord - we're 15-20 Trillion in debt last I checked.

Trump is excerting a pattern of behavior that emphasizes this as it relates to all his international decisions. The idea that America should nto be viewed as the world leader. And it's clear he wants other countries to follow suit. Every country is in so much debt that it has become acceptable to be in debt while still funding extraneous projects.

Tha Paris decision emphasizes all this ontop of the OP - setting up America as someone who will not be flexible on the more dangerous matters with North Korea and Russia.

Where is the $100 billion coming from?  Is it like 2.5-4 billion per year over the whole expected lifetime of the Paris Agreement?  $100 billion over 30 years is chump change to the USA, and even more chump change compared to the impact of rising sea levels on premium coastal real estate (and entire coastal cities). 

Projects related to reducing global cimate change can't really be called "extraneous" to nations that exist on this planet IMO.  I believe all the signatories to the Paris Agreement do. 

I wish they had just called it the Pittsburgh Agreement, and then Trump would have stayed in.