Trump smashes things like a toddler. Will the Paris agreement be next? | Ross Barkan
Despite fancying himself as some kind of master builder, he has only shown himself to be a dismantler, a destroyer
Donald Trump doesn’t give much thought to his legacy because he has little interest in living outside the blinding present. Ideas and impulses come and go, defining national policy, rendering past and future meaningless. Now the world trembles as this erratic president mulls whether to withdraw from a climate change accord that may determine the course of the century.
If Trump moves to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, as he once vowed to do as a candidate, he would successfully undercut global efforts to avert a coming catastrophe. As the world’s largest economy and second largest greenhouse gas polluter, the US cannot unilaterally destroy the 195-nation pact, but it can encourage other nations more skeptical of the deal, such as India and the Philippines, to follow suit.
The goals of the agreement – to lower planet-warming emissions enough to mitigate the extreme heat, massive storms and coastal flooding projected for the coming decades – will be even harder to reach.
Trump is a climate change skeptic, a severe outlier on the world stage but not so in his retrograde Republican party. Democrats, beset with their own challenges and hypocrisies, at least understand that climate change poses an existential threat. This is not like Trump hemming and hawing over pulling out of Nato, a military alliance that is not required to protect the stability of human civilization. This is much worse.
But these are not terms Trump thinks in. Despite fancying himself as some kind of master builder, he has only shown himself to be a dismantler, a destroyer. His proposed budget guts the government programs needed by the most desperate Americans, many of whom voted for him.
His obsession with repealing Obamacare, which no longer consumes most rank-and-file Republicans now that Barack Obama has left office, will only further destabilize healthcare markets and ensure the suffering of the oldest, sickest and the poorest.
A true populist, even one disdainful of democratic institutions, would at least try to protect the economic safety net that saves the very people who put him in office. Not so with Trump. Maybe the most galling aspect of this new American order is the lack of any organizing philosophy, a workable plan to replace the things he wishes to dismantle. Like a toddler at play time, he smashes things and refuses to clean up. His building blocks are left on the mat.
What could be gained from pulling America out of the Paris agreement or introducing new caveats? Will a few more Trump voters cheer on their man for staying true to his insanity? Maybe. But if the cult of Trump has proven one thing, it’s that it’s forgiving of inconsistencies. It will remain intact whether the strongman swings left or right. It will be there for him if he decides to reaffirm America’s commitment to guarding the health of the planet.
To the people who voted for Trump in coal country, environmentalists will always be the sworn enemy, even if it’s ruthless corporate titans, technological automation and the decline of unions which have doomed them. Trump’s happy to keep that canard alive. And he’s just as happy to offer them nothing else.
Most politicians have a conception of what their utopia might look like, or at least advance ideas or policies towards building a world they’d like to see. Trump, ever more willing to co-opt the nihilism of his party’s most rightwing flank, has no use for seriously investing in his country or the world’s environmental sustainability. That would force him to think deeply about the future. And everyone knows he doesn’t make time for that.
