Jerry Brown’s “Climate Change” Crusade Meets Resistance in Brussels, Bonn
Brown’s real political future is apt to mirror Al Gore’s.
Shortly after Donald Trump was elected President, I noted that California Governor Jerry Brown essentially designated himself as President of the Left Coast.
So it is with some amusement that I noted the headline in Politico discussing Brown’s European “Climate Change” tour: Jerry Brown, President of the Independent Republic of California.
…In the raw balance of power between a governor and a president, Brown has almost no standing abroad. What he does have is a platform, and a proposition: Crusading across Europe in his Fitbit and his dark, boxy suit, Brown advances California and its policies almost as an alternative to the United States—and his waning governorship, after a lifetime in politics, as a quixotic rejection of the provincial limits of the American governor. In the growing chasm between Trump’s Washington and California—principally on climate change, but also taxes, health care, gun control and immigration—Brown is functioning as the head of something closer to a country than a state.
Based on these points, Brown is experiencing far less success than President Trump. While the President has managed to score several critical wins (e.g., an outstanding address in front of the South Korean Parliament, China signing a series of multibillion-dollar business agreements that bring jobs back to America), Brown is meeting robust and crippling resistance to his apocalyptic, anti-carbon message.
In Brussels, he struggled to handle “denialists”.
Gov. Jerry Brown, arriving in Brussels after collegial events in Germany, sparred publicly with British politicians when confronted over his climate change record at the European Parliament on Wednesday.
Steven Woolfe, a British politician on the parliament, was first to pierce the pleasantries, accusing Brown of supporting state intervention “at a huge scale” and spending and increasing taxes “like it’s going out of fashion.”
Brown’s climate change policy, he argued, isolates the state from much of the U.S. Woolfe dismissed California’s cap-and-trade carbon market as a “tax-and-spend” policy. And he teased the governor as potentially being interested in joining the European Union.
“I am sure you are well-meaning in wanting to protect the environment,” Woolfe said. “But do you not recognize that the policies you are implementing help the rich more than the poor, and make the poor suffer in the long-run?”
After California’s “President” insulted Woolfe and asserted the man was shedding “crocodile tears” for the poor, the meeting’s presiding officer banged down his gavel and ordered the politician not interrupt Brown.
In Bonn, he was met by eco-activist extremists who wanted to eliminate the state’s fracking industry, which actually brings in revenue to finance California’s many social justice programs.
Opponents of a controversial form of oil extraction repeatedly interrupted California Gov. Jerry Brown’s speech pledging support for the Paris agreement on Saturday, unfurling signs and arguing that his refusal to ban hydraulic fracturing was a stain on his environmental record.
About a dozen protesters chanted “carbon trading is no solution,” a criticism of his cap-and-trade system, and “poisoned wastewater” and “keep it in the ground,” shots at his permissive stance on fracking, at an event with Brown and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg called “America’s Pledge.”
…Despite being held up as an environmental leader and championing environmental causes going back to his first time as governor, from 1975 to 1983, Brown’s refusal to ban fracking has prompted protests for years.
Then, Brown brought the #WarOnTrump to Germany:
But the protests continued for much of Brown’s address. At one point, when some in the crowd of hundreds rallied behind the Democratic governor, he led a chant of “We’re still in.”
Brown, improvising, added his own twist: “Trump’s still out. Trump is still out. Trump is still out.”
I will simply point out that Trump is out only of the economy-crippling Climate Accord, and that was the will of the American people. It’s also worth noting that Brown will be out—of office and of his hubristic “California Climate Accord”—in 2018; whereas, Trump will be in until at least 2021 (I think his chances for re-election are astronomical).
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Comments
I’m torn about if CA should secede: not about whether they should do it, but what our response would be. We either wave goodbye as they take most of America’s problems with them, or we immediately invade and wipe out the progressives.
Decisions, decisions…
There are alternatives. Consider, if we let them secede, they will be a separate country and we will have absolutely no obligation to sell them water, power, petroleum, food, or anything. The Colorado River Compact will not apply to them so their current share of the Colorado River can be split between Arizona and Colorado. I’m betting there will be the equivalent of medieval besieged cities all up and down the coast. Now that’s entertainment.
Conversely, if they try to secede, first we could let every county chose whether they want to join them, leaving the coastal strip as the Peoples’ Democrat Republic. We will sort out how many states they coalesce into.
Then we find a modern equivalent of William Tecumseh Sherman, put him and a couple hundred thousand volunteers into Marin County and let them march to the Mexican border along the coast, looting and pillaging as they go. When they reach the border, then we can start the multi-decade effort to “Reconstruct” them to being part of this country again.
I like that idea – and after it is over, of course, we can block them from voting in any national elections for at least 10 years.
Of course we send in the ground forces from the east and the navy from the west and we put down that little rebellion and install a caretaker government until politics in that state can be repaired.
If things start getting close to that we shut down Vandenberg, close Lawrence Livermore Labs and cut off government contracts to the UC schools, Stanford and Caltech.
Secession has been illegal at least since the 1860’s, and that real estate is too valuable to give away to Mexico, California-seceded, or anyone else.
Did Jerry walk to Europe? Has he done anything that could not be done via teleconference?
Yeah, Jerry, you are all about saving the world.
After he helped destroy it in his first ridiculous terms as governor of California beginning in 1974.
California doesn’t learn: if it’s Brown, flush it down.
It’s astounding that Brown could actually win re-election decades after his first disastrous tenure as governor, but, he is living proof that Dumb-o-crats don’t care a whit about competence in their politicians; only about ideological purity and fealty.
Jerry Brown’s corruption, ignored by the democrat media:
Few California administrations have been plagued with as much corruption as Gov. Jerry Brown’s current governing cadre:
http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/opinion/2017/10/04/double-standard-prevails-california-government/719331001/
Corruption allegations getting closer to Gov. Brown:
http://www.dailynews.com/2016/03/14/corruption-allegations-getting-closer-to-gov-brown-thomas-elias/
Banner year for political corruption in California:
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article3938649.html
Gov. Jerry Brown had state workers research oil on family ranch:
http://beta.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-brown-state-research-oil-ranch-20151105-story.html
when you have a state control by democrats the way CA is, corruption is to be expected. see IL, NY, MD, and MA for further examples
The 12-cent per gallon state gas tax just went into effect here in CA, so the price of all consumer goods will now go up. Democrats, and particularly Governor Moonbeam here, are either economic morons or just don’t care how their greed affects ordinary people.
They buy votes with the money of those who pay the taxes. It is how all politicians on the Left work, and many putative right leaning (AKA Republican) pols.
As long as it doesn’t affect ‘their’ interests.
Same with the garbage of the GOPe.
My God — as if one sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, self-serving, self-enriching, retired politician-hypocrite wasn’t enough (i.e., Al Bore) — now, Americans can look forward to being treated to the ceaseless harangues of yet another insufferable, retired Dumb-o-crat snake-oil salesman getting rich while preaching the Gospel of “Climate Change.”
Brown is pretending to political roles he does not own (not new for politicians, admittedly). And California cannot secede. It has too many federal dependents. There would be war over that.
And he doesn’t speak for other states, including the blue ones.
This sanctuary city nonsense has to be unraveled if there is to be any permanent fix to immigration. In fact, it is a corruption of local government to place its legal authority over the county, state and federal offices.
People laughed at the the “nuclear free zones” in Berkeley (ironically, the actual location of early radioactivity experimentation) but this is the essence of the rot in local politics I’m talking about: these people take a public salary and then embroil their cities into issues where they have no standing and no prospect of resolution. They do this for headlines and personal promotion at the expense of residents.