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US quits Paris climate pact

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Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#251

Post by _ph_ »

nthcolumn wrote: post #176
sergiotapia wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how you think the NATO meeting was bad. Countries should pay their fair (and agreed to!) share towards NATO.

Germany is exiting NATO. They have already deferred any spending commitment until after BREXIT (UK leaving the EU). I don't think Trump's weird behaviour prompted Merkel's 'We can't depend on them anymore' speech. But bad? meh. depends if you think the demise of NATO is bad.

German here - Germany is certainly not exiting the Nato. Quite the contrary. The large part of the German defense forces are deployed on Nato duties. Former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Turkey (supporting the fight agains the IS).

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#252

Post by aaron-lebo »

walshemj wrote: post #233
aaron-lebo wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it's not that hard to make bad historical analogies. "This is what Dwight Clark's catch in the 1982 championship game must have felt like to Ringo Starr." Yeah?

No its when the decline of the UK as an imperial power became obvious not some rounders player and the least musical beetle.

Why is this Suez? How do you know it's not the British losing a battle in 1761 or something? I mean, there were probably prognosticators at that time saying, "Charlie, did you hear about that British defeat by the French by the old Ohio River. By God they're finished as an empire. Done!"

We won't know the impact this has on anything for a long time. In a decade it probably isn't going to matter. Just seems like a huge overreaction to compare something like this to Suez.

If you really want to get into why it's a bad analogy, we can talk about how Suez was the result of the Egyptians nationalizing the canal and then the new superpower (the US) rebuffing the British when they tried to take it back. Yeah, that was a sign of the end of British power. Seems like this incident is the US taking the ball and going home, with no real response from other nations other than protest. If anything it tells you how much power the US still has.

...but I just liked my Dwight Clark joke. The Catch still haunts me as a Cowboys fan.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#253

Post by GVIrish »

scarmig wrote: post #170
pvnick wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is because the previous president decided to unilaterally bind the country to the agreement rather than seek treaty ratification from Congress. It is a risk that ruling by executive decree entails.

Other countries don't care about post-facto rationalizations by partisans to demonize the other side in domestic policies. The USA cannot be trusted as an ally. That is the takeaway here. Saying that "but Obama's worse than Trump!!!" isn't changing that and is entirely besides the point. ETA: And, for what its worth, the Senate ratified NATO, and that hasn't stopped Trump and Republicans from doing their utmost to sa…

I don't think the parent poster was trying to say 'but Obama was worse', he was just pointing at the fact that an Executive Order can be undone by a successor.

Kind of a moot point IMO, given the current state of the GOP. Had Obama gone to Congress they probably would've reflexively voted it down anyway. The current GOP is willing to damage America's trustworthiness on the world stage and this is more proof to the point.

I don't know if most mainstream Republicans would've done something as drastic as this after the accord had been agreed to but Trump is basically the head of the party now so here we are.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#254

Post by vacri »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #85
dismantlethesun wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the US isn't a good global leader. It is, after all, only the aftermath of WW2 that left enough of a power vacuum for two countries at the edges of "proprer civilisation" like the USA and Russia to take the central position as the world superpowers. I wouldn't be sad if the USA returns to a position of only interfering within its sphere of influence in North and South America. Being a global leader isn't mere…

What? The US is a nation of immigrants. It doesn't see other nations as "other" any more than any other nation, and probably less so because we're very culturally diverse. But yeah, if you want to go back to the days where benevolent places like the British Empire, Imperial Germany, and the USSR ruled the world, have at it. Because they were benevolent, right? The US isn't doing a great job, but if American power get…

Imperial Germany never had much of a global empire, only a central European one. Places like Namibia and New Guinea weren't exactly powerhouse colonies.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#255

Post by ajross »

neaden wrote: post #178
fudgie wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All countries in NATO have promised to spend 2% of GDP by 2024, yes.

But many NATO countries have had a decrease in military spending since 2006 when this agreement was signed and have shown no real intention to get up to this level. Now it's perfectly reasonable to say that this is fine and the 2006 agreement isn't that big of a deal. It's also very reasonable to say that good relations are more important than everyone meeting their goal and a clear commitment to Article 5 is essenti…

With all due respect, that's missing the point. If you believe that NATO is a good thing and successfully deters aggression against its member states, Trump's near-abrogation of America's treaty commitments objectively did far, far more damage to that deterrence than Germany underfunding its army. Ergo, Trump's nonsense about "paying" and your defense thereof seems terribly insincere. Either you don't believe in NATO's mission, or you are confused about how it works.

I mean... what exactly are you arguing here?

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#257

Post by gonvaled »

dragonwriter wrote: post #119
rayiner wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you believe the USA should be involved at all on the international stage, this creation of new public knowledge is a big detriment to that end. The belief that the U.S. needs to be involved in the international stage is based on the fallacious assumption that international cooperation can fix climate change. There is no scenario in which that happens. Without fundamental technological leaps, we'd have to decreas…

> There is no political fix. Only technological ones. Technological fixes will not be adopted unless climate-related externalities are internalized into transactions, because of the tragedy of the commons. A political fix is a necessary prerequisite to the adoption of any technological fix.

This, very much this.

Another way to put this: the asteroid does not care if your financial markets have factored it in the models or not. It just hits you.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#258

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

scarmig wrote: post #51

This is one of those situations where you should be shaking your head, even if you're a climate change denying conservative or a fussil fuel industrial interest. The Paris pact was pretty toothless: it was a step forward, but heavily aspirational. Indeed, one of the stated complaints of conservatives was that it did nothing to enforce compliance. The Trump Administration could have just as well ignored it without for…

If the US was able to survive the loss of the Vietnam war and the Bay of Pigs where many people who bet their lives on the US died after being abandoned by them, the US will survive this as well and American credibility will be just fine in the long term.

Basically, the rest of the world will have to learn that getting the US to agree to something that is opposed by a significant group of Americans is a losing proposition. The fact that the Paris climate pact was not even submitted for ratification by the Senate, should tell you that there was significant opposition.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#260

Post by ajross »

vacri wrote: post #234
ajross wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NATO isn't a pool of money, no one "pays" anything for it. It's a mutual self defense treaty (and a command structure for executing such an operation). Trump did nothing to squeeze money out of anyone at that meeting, nor would it have made any sense for him to have done so. By very conspicuously refusing to endorse Article V in his speech, however, he called the US commitment to NATO self-defense into question (ques…

The ironic thing is that a big part of what Made America Great in the first place was military protection of trading partners. Withdraw that protection and the trading partners now have less reason to give sweetheart trade deals.

The same point can even be made more cynical and still work: America's military dominance of its trading sphere led to a uniform perception of stability and thus to an environment where we could borrow essentially free money from the rest of the world. Take that stability away and the world desire for treasury bonds dries up, and suddenly it becomes harder to finance that huge military in the first place.

Basically, Trump is kicking over the house of cards as we watch.

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