Change! Trump seeks to pull US out of Paris Climate Agreement
President-Elect Trump does more presidential work in one week than Obama has for 8 years.
President-Elect Donald Trump is probably experiencing the shortest honeymoon in American political history.
He is the target of massive protests and the focus of riotous mobs, before he even takes the oath of office let alone signs his first law or executive order. Furthermore, he is taking no time off when it comes to preparing his team to undo the Obama Administration’s economy-crushing policies.
Case-in-point: Trump is looking for ways to extract the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.
A source on Trump’s transition team told Reuters that the team was looking for ways to bypass the procedure to leave the Paris accord, which was agreed upon last December. Trump has previously stated his disbelief in global warming. Other global governments, including China, have expressed their reaffirming support for the deal.
“It was reckless for the Paris agreement to enter into force before the election,” the source told Reuters on Tuesday.
One of the alternatives he said was to withdraw from the 1992 Convention that was a parent to the 2015 Paris accord. It would void U.S. participation in the deal in a year’s time. Trump could also “delete” the U.S. signature from the deal.
However, the Obama Administration intends to carry on until the bitter end.
Despite the threat of a US withdrawal, US secretary of state John Kerry said on Sunday that he would continue his efforts to implement the Paris agreement until Barack Obama leaves office on 20 January.
Speaking in New Zealand following a trip to Antarctica, Kerry appeared to take a swipe at Trump when he listed some of the ways in which global warming could already be seen. He said that there were more fires, floods and damaging storms around the world, and sea levels were rising.
“The evidence is mounting in ways that people in public life should not dare to avoid accepting as a mandate for action,” Kerry said.
Republican senators have been less than thrilled that President Obama made the climate pact without the advice and consent of their legislative body. They issued a letter to Kerry underscoring this fact.
Thirteen Senate Republicans sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last week stating that “sole executive agreements,” as Obama’s State Department describes Paris, constitute “one of the lowest forms of commitment the United States can make and still be considered a party to an agreement.”
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who spearheaded the letter, noted yesterday that Republicans have issued similar warnings for more than a year, “but nobody wanted to believe us.”
“The message can no longer be ignored: Americans do not support it when their president sidesteps Congress,” he said in a statement.
Even sweeter is the immediate fiscal impact of Trump’s actions regarding the Paris Climate Agreement.
The Trump victory makes it unlikely that the United States will make good on the $2.5 billion it still owes to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, and the new administration is likely to curtail foreign aid overall.
I noted that Obama had deposited $500 million into the same fund in March of this year, at a time when our Navy Seals were short of combat rifles. The fact that Trump will not empower eco-activists by funding their pseudo-science shenanigans is…delightful.
During the campaign, President Obama warned that electing Trump would undo his work. This threat actually turned out to be a selling point, and the most significant legacy Obama leaves behind is the utter collapse of the Democratic Party.
It appears that President-Elect Trump has done more presidential work on behalf of the American people in less than a week than Obama has done during his entire 8 years.
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Without rancor or condemnation, although both would be appropriate, I simply observe that we’ve seen what the community organizer has done. Now, let’s see what the businessman can do.
You forgot ‘fraud,’ and ‘traitor.’
Keep up the good work, President-elect Trump! Bwahahahahaha.
Anyone tired of winning yet?
Me either.
Folks – below. Idea is worth the six minutes to watch. At least one liberal is getting it 100% correct on why they lost.
And now… in the words of the Legt’ very own golden child…. “we won. Elections have consequences” and his other lesson: “I have a pen. I have a phone.”
https://pjmedia.com/video/lefty-reporter-jonathan-pie-gets-it-breaks-down-exactly-why-trump-won/
Yes, worth watching, but beware of strong language. This rant isn’t appropriate for offices or small children.
Just so everyone knows;
“Jonathan Pie” is a character created and played by British actor Tom Walker.
The “shtick” is that Pie is a politically liberal professional reporter who gives pre/post show, off the air, rants to his unseen (and actually nonexistent) staff.
He did that Utoobie vid about Trump’s win and it went viral because a lot of people here in the U.S., especially PJM, thought it was ‘real’.
Sorry, Secretary Kerry, but anything that President Obama can do with a stroke of a pen, President Trump can undo with a stroke of a pen. He should understand this having been in the Senate so long. And, supposedly having a law degree too. Presidents can’t abrogate treaties (ratified by the Senate), or duly enacted laws, with a stroke of a pen. But this was never ratified by the Senate, or enacted by Congress. It was just an unenforceable agreement between him and some other countries. It never legally bound the US to anything. Legally, it couldn’t. Telling these other countries anything to the contrary is completely on him (Kerry), and him alone.
Hey libs, a pen and a phone doesn’t sound so cute now does it.
Actually presidents can unilaterally abrogate treaties. That was established in Goldwater v Carter. But you are correct that even if they couldn’t, this isn’t a treaty, and is therefore not an obligation of the USA at all. It’s a private agreement that Mr Obama made with a bunch of foreigners; he had every right to make this agreement, but it binds nobody else. (Legally it doesn’t even bind him.)
“sole executive agreements … [constitute] one of the lowest forms of commitment the United States can make and still be considered a party to an agreement.”
What is the Constitutional basis of this claim, I wonder. I don’t offhand recall anything about “the advice and consent of the Senate, except when the Executive makes a personal agreement”.
There isn’t one, or at least one that survives the laugh test. Here is my rough list of legal priorities:
1. Constitution
2. Duly ratified (by the Senate) treaties
3. Duly enacted laws
4. Duly enacted regulations
5. Executive orders, letters, agreements, etc.
Each level trumps the lower levels, but can be overcome, reversed, or repealed by actions at that level (or higher). What we have here is something at #5 level, which means that President Trump can abrogate it just as easily as President Obama (and/or Sec. Kerry) accepted or agreed to it.
Your #2 and #3 are equal in rank. They are both trumped by the constitution, but trump state laws and constitutions. (Actually #3 should be slightly higher than #2, because the president can abrogate #2 but not #3.)
Your #5 has no legal status at all; these things are simply what the current president chooses to do. Not only can his successors ignore them, he himself can change his mind at any time.
Dare I say it, the political winds have changed and are blowing hot in the other direction. Now that is global warming I can believe in!
“The Trump victory makes it unlikely that the United States will make good on the $2.5 billion it still owes to the U.N. Green Climate Fund,….”
And now we know why China wanted the US to stay in.
The climate hysterics lost me years ago, right when they said that there was nothing the US could do as a practical matter, to affect their models.
That and, as a chemist, I am well aware that there are many factors that completely swamp the effects of the amount of CO2 in the air.
That said, I heartily agree that 1) mulching gardens and farms on the periphery of the Sahara Desert, 2) design and distribution of less-polluting stoves in Indian households, and 3) implementation of known pollution-reduction technologies in China’s industrial plants are all worth endeavors that can have significant environmental impact. I just want better results than we got in Haiti.
“The climate hysterics lost me years ago, right when they said that there was nothing the US could do as a practical matter, to affect their models.”
The hysterics lost me when their models missed predicted time after time, yet they continued to justify their use with “updates” and excuses for the misses.
It’s not that I don’t believe there may be a positive impact from better control of CO2 emissions. The problem is that the doomsday projections are only supported by political arguments that are made under the veil of science. It isn’t true science if it is protected from scrutiny and skepticism. It is politics at that point. So perhaps measures you list and others like sequestering certain emissions for use (and not burial) like in large greenhouses is an economical but equally effective path to follow.
I studied quite a bit of science when I was an undergrad, and I did work as a computer systems engineer. I would never describe myself as either a scientist or an engineer. I would just say I’ve been exposed to science and engineering. I’m constantly amazed by the fact I keep getting lectured by people who have had little to no exposure to science or engineering. I only mention engineering because math is often involved in evaluating claims. Calculus remains beyond me but I was pretty good at Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, as well as statistics.
Some interesting math. I’ve seen the climate hysterics claim that the sea may rise as much as 20 feet per century as the glaciers melt. What glaciers? Because, interesting statistic, approximately 90% of the global ice mass is in Antarctica. And even in the worst case scenario the temperature at the south pole isn’t going to rise enough to actually melt the ice. (Yes I understand one of the ice sheets threatens to break free but please add the word erosion to your vocabulary; if it breaks free it will be due to millennia of wear and tear on the underlying sea bed, not due to insufficient warming, and no amount of wind turbines, solar panels, and Priuses can do a damn thing about erosion.)
So back at the end of the last Ice Age when what is now habitable land in the northern hemisphere was actually covered by glaciers the sea rose on average 1 meter per year or just over 3 feet. With occasional jumps to just over 8 feet or 2.5 meters. So where is this 20 feet of melting glacier water supposed to come from? Outside of Antarctica, where the glaciers are in no danger of melting, most of the rest of the glaciers already melted. And when they did not even then did the sea rise at 20 feet per century.
It is unpossible. Then you combine it with all the other failed predictions and dire warnings issued by pearl-clutching supposed scientists that if we don’t do something RIGHT NOW it will be too late. In 2001 (no longer available on the original site) a UK paper published a story after a snowless winter. A “climate scientist” from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit claimed that ten years hence British children would not know what snow was. He was wildly wrong. They know what snow is. After this idiot from the UEA CRU so confidently made his prediction that the island has had several winters so severe the entire island from Cornwall in the south the the northern coast of Scotland has been entirely snowed under. Naturally the paper disappeared the article out of embarrassment. Winters have been so severe it’s actually created lethal situations as there have been many cases in Britain where ice formed so heavily on the turbine blades large lethal chunks have been flung to such great distances it has been too life threatening to leave the house.
Fortunately the global warming hysterics have come up with the solution. Check it out.
http://windren.se/WW2015/WW2015_13_312_Gedda_Deicing_helicopter.pdf
“Airborne de-icing solution for wind turbines.
…Results from Canada has shown:
It is possible to remove ice from wind turbine blade.
However, it takes too long due to the fact that the equipment
works more like a high pressure washer, similar to a snow making machine
…Set up for field establishment:
44 m³ water tank capacity
Oil fuel depot and oil burner (260 kW) for water heating
Heating capacity from 7° C to 65° C in 7h.
Helicopter fuel depot”
See, easy peasy. All you need is fleet of jet turbine helicopters, a fleet of large commercial trucks equipped with heavy duty oil burning heaters, sufficient fossil fuels to run the entire operation all winter long, and you, too, can have Green Energy in snow country.
No kidding, they AGW hysterics actually think this is sane.
The Warmunists lost me when I made my own measurements.
That’s what makes it science. You don’t ask Aristotle, or the Pope, or the Scientific Consensus, you ask the physical universe. And if you understand scientific method, you’ll understand the answer.
The important aspect of this is, it unties our people from more regulations. Peter Thiel has often remarked that our innovation, except in computers, has ground to a halt because it’s been regulated to rigor mortis.
Before we get all crazy excited, we need to deal with this bombshell. It turns out that Trump was a natural born Pakistani named Dawood Ibrahim Khan who was later adopted by an American family, according to Urdu language Neo News.
Link to Times Of Israel article, since I’m pretty sure most LI readers can’t read the Urdu at Neo News.
This looks entirely credible to me, and may kill the Trump presidency before it gets started:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-bizarre-birther-twist-claims-trump-is-pakistani/
They even have a cheetorific photo of Trump as a one-year-old in his home country of Pakistan.
Lol. Could they out-birther the OB?(Original Birther)
Dude! They have PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE.
I am as impressed with that story as I was with the sexist Trump campaign ads on Craigslist.
DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda approved fake sexist Trump Craigslist Ads
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3715306/Clinton-campaign-hacked-attacks-Democrats-sources.html#i-54ecd7b11f72836b
Credit where credit is due: Thank goodness Trump sees through the warmunist claptrap.
“unlikely that the United States will make good on the $2.5 billion it still owes to the U.N. Green Climate Fund”
Hahaha that’s funny. Who told you we OWE $2.5 billion to some UN climate fund? If you like the jets and fancy climate change seminars in Sydney and Los Angeles and Acapulco, start paying for them yourselves.
You made a “deal” with a con man who went around the normal checks and balances to sell you something. Your fault for not thinking it through. It’s not the will of the American people, and we don’t owe you jack.
The first thing Trump needs to do is go on a global apology tour to apologize for Obama.
Heck Henry, he can tweet it out and say he’s helping solve globull warming.