You Will Anyway: America, this is your president

Monday, August 26, 2019

America, this is your president

The US president, Donald Trump, did not attend Monday’s crucial discussion on climate and biodiversity at the G7 meeting of international leaders in Biarritz, missing talks on how to deal with the Amazon rainforest fires as well as new ways to cut carbon emissions.

The Guardian

Instead, he spent the time retweeting right-wing bullshit.

Trump was later asked by reporters covering a meeting with Germany’s Angela Merkel whether he had attended the climate session. He replied: “We’re having it in a little while.” He didn’t appear to hear when a reporter told him it just happened.

Even without a helicopter drowning out the questions.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, confirmed that Trump had not personally attended the climate session but that Trump’s team had been present.

He said that he had had long and in-depth talks with Trump on the Amazon fires and that Trump “shares our objectives” and was “fully engaged” in the joint G7 effort to help Brazil put out the fires and reforest.

Not quite fully. He skipped the meeting.

Macron had placed the climate emergency and protection of biodiversity at the heart of the summit, even before the Amazon rainforest fires.

But just before the session began on Saturday, it appeared that Trump’s entourage felt discussing climate was of little importance, compared to the economy. Reports in the US said senior Trump aides felt Macron was seeking to embarrass his US counterpart by making the summit focus on “niche issues” such as climate change or gender equality.

In 2017, Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord.

[...]

Macron announced that the G7 had agreed to an immediate fund of at least $20m (£16m) to help Amazon countries fight wildfires and launch a long-term global initiative to protect the rainforest.

[...]

All G7 countries – the US, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Canada – would give technical and financial help to fight the Amazon fires.

Trump, probably: "We'll see what happens."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE 8/27: Brazil doesn't want it.

UPDATE:

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"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.