Paris is Burning
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- Published on Friday, 02 June 2017 22:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1425 .... June 3, 2017
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Paris is Burning
James P. Hare
With U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to formally withdraw from the Paris Agreement, he has put an end to months of apparent indecision. This withdrawal does not dissolve the agreement, which still includes nearly every country on the planet, but it is hard to imagine how an already weak agreement can be expected to slow -- not to mention reverse -- greenhouse gas emissions without the participation of the United States. Seeing this decision as anything other than a nail in the coffin of the global climate regime is nothing but wishful thinking.
For an administration that has promoted a seemingly unending series of bad policies -- from healthcare to immigration to militarism to the unceasing transfer of... wealth from working people to the wealthy -- this may be its worst. When future generations look back at the harm done by this president, they may remember this as his greatest crime. This is not to minimize the damage of his other policies or of the racism, xenophobia, and misogyny that drove his campaign and brought him into the White House, but climate change is the ultimate issue. It will affect everyone while exacerbating existing inequalities, and we only have one chance to get it right.
This decision is no surprise. Throughout his campaign, Trump promised to pull out of the Paris Agreement as part of his "America First" agenda that pits the promise of domestic jobs against environmental protections and international cooperation. We must reject Trump's noxious brand of nationalism and climate denialism. It is critical, however, not to sugarcoat the nature of much of what passes as international cooperation. So-called trade agreements have benefitted corporations and the wealthy at the expense of working people both in the United States and abroad.
It is not, as Trump's nativist critique would have it, that the United States made a bad deal with Mexico when negotiating NAFTA. Rather, elites in the United States, Mexico, and Canada made a good deal for themselves at the expense of the citizens of each country. Still, working people understand what NAFTA did to their workplaces and their communities, and Trump's attack on trade deals may have helped him to win enough working-class support in critical states to shift the electoral map in his favor, even if the extent of his working-class support has been greatly overstated by centrist commentators.
