Disney CEO Bob Iger among the executives abandoning Trump advisory roles over climate agreement

If you think Trump's plan is to hand whatever money is saved to fast food workers, you're mistaken. Participating in the agreement may not help our aching economy or associated disparities, but withdrawing isn't going to either.

Pete said:

So China gets to expand cheap coal generated electricity while we close coal plants and switch to more expensive alternative energy, such as solar panels made in, you guessed it, China.

Not only does the Paris Agreement not prevent the US from burning more coal, the closing of coal plants in the US has nothing to do with the Agreement. The abundance of inexpensive natural gas is the predominant driver of coal falling out of favor, along with the increasing feasibility of wind and solar.

But, a Heritage Foundation study found...

Oh, I'm sure they did. The brilliant minds at Breitbart didn't like the Paris Agreement either, I'm told.

...our economy is not strong in a practical sense, but numbers are manipulated to make it seem that way. Retail store chains are folding left and right, crime and gun violence is up in most major cities because of poverty and people are trying to support families by working at fast food joints. Over 21% of the population participates in some form of major government assistance program. College graduates are living in their parent's basement because they can't make ends meet.

Human Sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

The economy has been better, yes (it's also been much worse). But you know what is really bad for our economy? The flooding of our coastal cities combined with droughts disrupting food supplies.

Lord Gonchar said:

Pardon my ignorance (and do inform me where necessary), but it seems like so much of this agreement was voluntary, noncommittal and unenforceable that it amounted to little more than a symbolic gesture.

True, but there is some import to the planet's largest polluter saying "Hey, other Earthlings? We know we... sort of f***ed up the planet pretty bad, and while we don't really feel that bad about it, we are finally ready to make some small efforts to start to make things right."

Will it change things? Probably not substantially in the short term. But if there's truth to the "2 degrees" thing? That may be a different story.

This was a pretty great agreement. We had a set of general standards that the entire planet agreed to, and we were not going to be held to any legally-binding regulations. And even THAT was too "green" for the modern GOP... The Overton Window strikes again. :-)

"Yeah but China!" is such a lame argument for anything. That's why we have no real leadership in the United States anymore, because there's a scapegoat for everything. We don't lead, we make excuses and justify them with the actions of others. We kick puppies because someone else kicks kittens.

And we're already losing the renewable opportunity. China has already started flooding the market with cheap solar, and the only way Tesla will compete is if they innovate with the roof tiles. How many times are we going to make the same mistakes, protecting the American incumbents at the expense of American leaders? And if you think solar is not your future, you're delusional. Renewables aren't an environmental or political issue, they're financial at this point.

I find it funny that we are talking about the environment on a web-site dedicated to amusement parks/roller coasters...

How much wood is used to make amusement parks? How much electricity is used for pretty little lights? Just being a smart ass but you do have to think its kind of ironic..and its a big business.

You're obviously new here...

Long time lurker

I'm not convinced you're lurking often enough.

Just to add almost nothing to the topic: I have a hard time becoming overly concerned with the misdeeds of power hungry war mongers. Only because there is so little I can actually do about it.

....climbing back under my rock from which I lurk... often.

China has already started flooding the market with cheap solar, and the only way Tesla will compete is if they innovate with the roof tiles.

That is a pretty common business model in a lot of industries. Innovate in the US and leave mass production to China. Specialty manufacturing can work in the US as well. Costs are significantly lower in China (and India). That isn't going to change any time soon.

Opting out of the Paris accord doesn't end the US's energy industry (particularly not its growing renewables industry). States still have renewable requirements which remain in place. I expect that renewable industry will continue to grow.

In terms of the accord itself, a law without a penalty is just advice. If it cannot be enforced and there are no penalties for violating it, how much is it worth?

Dale K said:

I find it funny that we are talking about the environment on a web-site dedicated to amusement parks/roller coasters...

How much wood is used to make amusement parks? How much electricity is used for pretty little lights? Just being a smart ass but you do have to think its kind of ironic..and its a big business.

You're looking at drops in the ocean. And they're not even the right drops.

Edit: To expound on my somewhat terse reply, pollution from industry and transportation is orders of magnitudes larger than pollution from the amusement industry. It's like when a million dollar organization tries to shave the budget by switching to 1-ply toilet paper.

Blackie said:

Just to add almost nothing to the topic: I have a hard time becoming overly concerned with the misdeeds of power hungry war mongers. Only because there is so little I can actually do about it.

Boycott all amusement parks owned by warmongers. :)

Note: We need the smiley's back.

Lord Gonchar said:
...so much of this agreement was voluntary, noncommittal and unenforceable that it amounted to little more than a symbolic gesture.

All of the agreement was voluntary, noncommittal and unenforcable. That's what vexes me about Trump's decision to pull out: with no downside to simply ignoring the agreement, he basically said, "Hey, Syria has the right idea here. Let's stand with them."

Then again, he's the President who thinks NATO member nations owe the US money. Maybe his staff didn't include his name often enough in the one or two page memos he got about the Paris Accords, and he lost interest and stopped reading.

Lord Gonchar said:
Pardon my ignorance (and do inform me where necessary), but it seems like so much of this agreement was voluntary, noncommittal and unenforceable that it amounted to little more than a symbolic gesture.

I'm not making judgement. I don't pretend to know (or care) enough. But you guys are sort of convincing me that pulling out isn't going to change anything for real - other than the pleasantries of the symbolic agreements.

Perhaps it was symbolic, and perhaps the Paris Agreement is rather worthless. However, Trump's administration has proven to be anti-environmentalism at basically every opportunity. He has appointed someone who denies the existence of man made global warming as the head of the EPA, he has signed off on overturning several environmental regulations (granted, probably not all of them were "necessary", but some certainly were), and he did a multi-billion weapons deal with our oil butt buddy Saudi Arabia. We sell weapons to a country that literally is using them to arm ISIS and commit a genocide in Yemen because they give us oil.

Granted, this is typical US policy to give blow jobs to big oil. We went to war over it, Hilary Clinton promoted fracking around the world and supported the Saudis more than basically anyone, and Obama sucked off the oil companies as well. But Trump is uniquely bad here, as he might not just be corrupt here, but he might actually not believe in global warming. Getting out of the Paris agreement was probably a tipping point for all these people. Macron, France's new president, said it best in a recent press conference. He encouraged US scientists to come to France, as if our government doesn't respect science, what point is it for scientists to remain here?

Boesball said...and he did a multi-billion weapons deal with our oil butt buddy Saudi Arabia.

And he didn't even do that. His "deal" turns out to be a series of letters from the Pentagon saying 'golly, we'd sure like to sell weapons' and from the Saudis saying 'gosh, we'd love to buy weapons'. No contract. No agreement. No deal.

Thank you for telling me that, as I just looked that up, and it was news today that the deal was fake, and that's a good thing.

However, it's still ridiculous that our government is so cozy with them and that we provide military aid of any kind to them especially for the reasons we do. Trump IS too cozy with them, Obama was too, and it's part of an overall support for big oil companies in the USA.

This is a bit off topic, but I think it was worth bringing up.

GoBucks89 said:
Opting out of the Paris accord doesn't end the US's energy industry (particularly not its growing renewables industry). States still have renewable requirements which remain in place. I expect that renewable industry will continue to grow.

Yes, very true. The renewable energy industry will still grow and expand, but organically as market demand dictates. The Paris agreement, if enforceable and implemented as written, is really a raw deal for the U.S., basically just a carbon tax.

Well, there's the thing. The Paris Accords are not enforcable, they're strictly voluntary. And the Accords agreed to were tailored to the demands of the U.S., so I'm not sure how the U.S. getting what the U.S. wanted is a 'raw deal'.

As its voluntary, do you think it was a raw deal to celebrate the accord as meaning anything of significance (or even anything at all)?

Basically the previous administration sold out U.S. citizens by tailoring the accords to benefit the global corporations that supported the deal and can best benefit from the deal, such as GE, Dow Chemical, Morgan Stanley and Intel. This deal was much more on how money flows to the benefit of global corporations and globalization in general, under the pretense of climate and a carbon tax. While the agreement would have helped corporations like GE in the renewable energy sector, many other sectors in the economy would have been hurt by accelerated, forced adoption of renewable energy.

You say these things as if capitalism and economics is the only impetus for policy. Renewable energy *should* be accelerated and forced artificially because capitalism is famously bad at protecting the environment.