Imagine the picture above, but without the grass. By the time Barron Trump is ready to spill national secrets on the patios at Mar-a-Lago, the ocean is likely to be lapping at the doors of Trump’s southern profit center and a good part of the resort will actually be underwater. With CO2 levels having passed a mark last seen three million years ago and still rising, and the two largest contributors to that issue meeting face-to-face in the world’s largest property promotion gimmick, will anyone bother to bring up the biggest crisis facing the planet?
Trump has chosen Mar-a-Lago as the place to “break the ice” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as a senior White House official put it during a background briefing Tuesday. Starting Thursday afternoon, Trump will host Xi for a highly anticipated two-day summit. …
The two have a lot to discuss, including trade tensions and the North Korean nuclear threat, a White House official said. But if Tuesday’s briefing was any indication, climate change — a critical issue on which the U.S. and China recently parted ways — won’t be on the agenda.
The US and China have parted ways in that the Chinese government is moving to quickly reduce the number of coal plants under construction and shift electrical production to renewable sources. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is doing all he can to restart the whale oil industry.
Under former President Barack Obama, the U.S. and China forged a strong partnership in the fight to combat global climate change. Obama and Xi met at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China, last September, where they fortified commitments to reduce carbon emissions by formally joining the Paris Agreement and pledged a “continued bilateral climate cooperation.”
“Continued” is a relative term. Though perhaps Trump will bring up climate change—to demand that the Chinese drop the hoax.
Where China and the U.S. only months ago found common ground, Trump has chosen to take the country in an opposite, dangerous direction. Since taking office, he has worked feverishly to roll back Obama-era climate policies, and has promised to save America’s dying coal industry, increase oil and gas production and make sweeping cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency that target climate programs.
Of course, it’s not as if Trump is the only world leader who doesn’t believe that human activity is the primary engine of climate change. After all, the boss is on his side.
Russia President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that climate change doubters "may not be at all silly."
In fact, Putin says that climate change is a good thing. Unless the Arctic ice melts, Russia will never be able to get to all that gas he sold to Rex Tillerson.
Russia's president also pointed to the economic importance of the Arctic region as he argued global warming and ice melting in the area created beneficial conditions for economic improvement.
Economic improvement for Siberia. For Florida … well, there will be a lot of opportunities for snorkel sales.