Donald Trump prides himself on being a so-called leader, a negotiator, and a businessman, but his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement proves that he is none of those things. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript:
On Thursday of this week, Donald Trump proved once and for all that he doesn’t know how to be a leader and more importantly, that he doesn’t even know what a leader is. In case, you weren’t aware, on Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump decided to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which sets non-binding goals for countries to sign onto and reduce their overall carbon emissions. Now during his speech where he gave the reasons for why the U.S. is pulling out of this, Donald Trump cited numbers from a fossil fuel funded report put forth by a spin off group from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He also had some numbers in there that came from the Heritage Foundation report about the Paris Climate Agreement both of which were completely fabricated and, funded by the fossil fuel industry.
Here’s the thing about the two reports Trump cited numbers from: they only looked at the costs of meeting these climate goals. Not one of them mentioned a single thing about the economic benefits or the jobs that could be created through innovative technology development in the United States. They looked at one-half of a math equation and came, obviously, to the wrong conclusion and that was Donald Trump’s justification for pulling the United States out of this climate agreement. During this speech, Donald Trump said the United States is going to be a leader on this issue and that brings me back to my main point. Donald Trump doesn’t know what it takes to really be a leader. By pulling the United States out of this agreement, he is seeding the United States’ power to other countries. Everybody out there now is talking about how China is going to become the leader in clean technology because that’s what’s at stake here, Mr. Trump. The United States could have been at the forefront of developing better means of renewable energy, harnessing, and distribution.
Instead, by doubling down on fossil fuels, which you have done throughout your entire presidency, these very short four months, you’re allowing other countries to develop that new technology that will be sold all over the world. It’s going to create thousands of jobs just like the renewable energy sector in the United States has been doing. Right now, the renewable energy industry in the United States is growing 12 times faster than the fossil fuel industry. They’re on the verge of employing more people in that one particular industry, than the entire fossil fuel industry, combined and Donald Trump is pulling us out of that. He’s saying, “No. I gotta protect American jobs.” Well guess what idiot, you just killed American jobs. You basically gave us an economic death sentence to pull us out of this agreement based on lies from the fossil fuel energy and here’s the real kicker, the fossil fuel industry, coal companies, and some oil companies were begging Donald Trump to stay in this agreement and do you know why? Because once Donald Trump pulled us out of that agreement, those energy companies that are already dying, lost their seat at the table for future discussions about global energy projects.
They’re now cut off from the rest of the world when it comes to making plans, when it comes to negotiations and when it comes to selling their goods overseas because what will likely happen as a result of this is that other countries will put huge taxes or tariffs on fossil fuels from the United States to make them less competitive because the United States is not part of this agreement. We’ve seen it happen with agreements in the past. If you don’t sign on, your goods become less viable overseas and that’s what we’re looking at today. Donald Trump doesn’t understand what it takes to be a leader. If he were a leader, if he knew what it meant, he would have kept us in this agreement and said, “You know what? The thresholds that they’ve set for us to meet, they’re not good enough. We’re gonna go even further. We’re gonna double down on investing in the renewable energy sector. We’re gonna put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work in this industry and we’re gonna sell these goods all over the world and we’re gonna make a ton of money. Everybody wins.” The environment wins. The workers win. The economy wins. Everybody. He didn’t do that. He bowed to the interest of a few fossil fuel companies and pulled us out of this agreement and if you don’t think that this is what’s going to happen, let me give you a little bit of a history lesson here. About 10 years ago George W. Bush decided that the United States was going to stop funding stem cell research. They did this based on the faulty belief among conservatives that stem cell research means that woman go in, have abortions, then we take those aborted fetuses and use that for research. That is what they told us. It’s not true but that’s what they told us.
As a result of Bush’s decision to stop funding stem cell research, South Korea emerged as the leader in stem cell research and now they’re one of the medical leaders of the world. People from all over the world are traveling to South Korea for medical tourism, to get treatments that you can’t get anywhere else because they’re so far ahead of everybody because they decided to invest in something the United States wouldn’t do. That’s what happens when you seed leadership to another country. Bush did it on stem cells and Donald Trump just did it yesterday when it comes to renewable energy.
