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June 4 This article first appeared on the site Revolution/revcom.us
“The United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.” With those 10 words on Thursday, June 1, Donald Trump escalated the grave, existential threat to the future of humanity and myriad forms of life on earth posed by human-created global warming.
This crisis is already accelerating at perilous speed: the last three years have been the warmest on record; seas are rising, glaciers are disappearing, arctic ice sheets are melting, extreme weather from droughts to severe flooding is more frequent, and huge numbers of species are being driven to extinction.
Yet none of these real and mounting threats were mentioned by Trump (as elsewhere his allies busily denied the reality of human-driven climate change). Instead, Trump declared he was rejecting the Paris accord on cutting carbon emissions because it had been negotiated to disadvantage the U.S. “to the exclusive benefit of other countries.” He claimed, “This agreement is less about the climate, and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.”
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt said America already had been taking care of the planet: “We owe no apologies to other nations for our environmental stewardship.”
Bad Deal for America? No, America’s the Worst “Deal” for the Planet, and Trump Wants to Make It Even Worse
No apologies? America being taken advantage of? No! America has already done more to dump its pollution on other countries and threaten the whole future of humanity than any other country! With four percent of the planet’s people, the U.S. has poured more CO2—carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels causing global warming—into the atmosphere than any other country. The U.S. alone is responsible for 30 percent of the planet’s excess CO2 (twice as much as China, which has four times the population).
And as one environmentalist put it, “The countries that have done the least to cause the problem are suffering first and worst.” Yet Trump rejected the Green Climate Fund (set up to make it seem like the world powers were addressing the disproportionate impact of climate change on the poorest countries) because it “is costing the United States a vast fortune.” In fact, it has so far cost the U.S. a pittance—$1 billion, a third of what it spends every month waging its unjust, imperialist war in Afghanistan.
As for the Paris climate agreement, it was in no way constructed to address that historic U.S. responsibility and vast inequality between the imperialist world and the oppressed countries or “Global South.” Nor was it forged to benefit “other countries.” The Paris process was led by the Obama administration, along with other global powers, to attempt to “manage” the climate crisis in ways that would preserve their oppressive systems and advance their global interests—not to halt the crisis. Each country picked its own voluntary target for reducing carbon emissions. Even if the targets were actually implemented by every country, which is far from a sure thing, global temperatures would still rise 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above preindustrial levels. As the New York Times noted, that 2 degrees C rise is already “the threshold deemed unacceptably risky”—and, in fact, temperatures are currently on a pace to rise 3 degrees C or more, “an outcome with far greater risk.” In other words, climate change is heading in a catastrophic direction.
Any Recognition of Climate Change or Any International Regulation Intolerable for Trump Fascists
But the Trump/Pence regime isn’t breaking with the Paris deal because it doesn’t address climate change. As we’ve noted, “In Trump’s view, and in the view of his most hard-core supporters, even recognizing that there is a problem of global climate change is unacceptable.” (Trump’s talk of beginning “negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or a really entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States” was just a thin smokescreen for gutting any meaningful climate regulation.)
A core element of the Trump program is removing even the most minimal constraints on U.S. capitalism-imperialism’s predatory exploitation and plunder, including environmental regulations. The regime has already begun gutting the EPA and regulations on coal-fired power plants, auto emissions, oil and gas drilling, and more, while accelerating the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. One reason the Trump/Pence regime rejected the Paris accord was their fear that the international agreement could be used by environmental groups and states in legal challenges against Trump’s ongoing rollback of environmental measures.
As ugly and dangerous as this is, there’s more. Breaking from the Paris accord is part of the Trump/Pence regime’s drive to more aggressively assert U.S. global power and dominance around the world, including by setting new terms with other global powers. This is all being done under the rubric of the “Reassertion of American sovereignty,” as if the world’s greatest predator is the suddenly world’s main victim.
Welding a Fascist “America First” Social Base
Trump’s “America First” rejection of the Paris accord also marked an emphatic declaration that the Trump/Pence cabal remains hell bent on beating back its opponents—“obstructionists” as Trump called them—and continuing its forced march to consolidate the fascist regime.
Trump’s breaking with the Paris accord—his pledge to put “no other consideration before the well-being of American citizens,” and his hollow promises of jobs and wealth—is also aimed at further welding a fascist base in society. A social base that doesn’t give a fuck about humanity or the planet, only their most narrow perceived interests and that feels anything goes in the name of “Making America Great Again”—including whipped-up legions like the unrepentant Portland Nazi slasher who screamed in court, “Death to the enemies of America. … You call it terrorism. I call it patriotism.”
And let’s face it. America First is no different than Hitler’s “Deutschland Uber Alles.”
You Won’t Oust Trump/Pence and Save the Planet by Putting “America First”
The enormity of the danger posed by the fascist Trump and U.S. capitalism-imperialism to the planet is nearly impossible to overstate.
As Revcom.us reported last November, “2016 is on track to break high-temperature records for the third straight year. Just last week a new study in the magazine Science Advances said if the world keeps burning fossil fuels as it is, global temperatures could rise twice as high this century as previously predicted. A press release for the study says this would mean pushing ‘Earth’s climate out of the envelope of temperature conditions that have prevailed for the last 784,000 years.’ Leading climate scientist Michael Mann commented that this study ‘does indeed provide support for the notion that a Donald Trump presidency could be game over for the climate.’”
This must not happen. And most immediately, the withdrawal from the Paris accord points to the urgency of driving the Trump/Pence regime from power and halting its escalating assault on the environment and humanity’s chances of survival. More fundamentally, and in order to actually have any chance at all of dealing with the looming catastrophe facing humanity, this crisis shines a light on the need to get rid of the capitalist-imperialist system altogether, in the only way possible—through revolution.