President Donald Trump, on Thursday, announced he was pulling the United States out of the Paris Agreement, an international treaty aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change.
In 2016, the Paris Agreement marked a turning point in the battle against climate change.The Paris Agreement is the result of more than two decades of climate diplomacy. It was formulated to account for the historical climate damage done by wealthy countries to poorer countries and provisions to help developing countries grow their economies without over-reliance on the same fossil fuel method used by those wealthy countries. The accord requires signatories to submit plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but it gives them wide latitude to create plans to meet those targets and does not bind them legally to achieve them.
Trump said he was open to renegotiating the Paris Agreement or creating an entirely new accord after the United States withdraws. Leaders of major European nations roundly rejected that prospect. In a statement to CNBC, a European Commission official said, the “Paris Agreement is non-negotiable.” Only Putin also said critics of Trump’s decision, which he announced on Thursday afternoon, were overreacting and that there is time to renegotiate the agreement.
All 195 countries of Europe, Asia, America that signed on to the agreement were asked to submit “nationally determined contributions,” which are voluntary targets for how they will contribute to achieving the agreement’s primary goal — to keep global average temperature “. While India was reluctant to join the Paris Agreement in 2015, the nation has also reiterated its commitment to the pact. Although Putin has claimed that climate change is not man-made, Russia is a party to the Paris accord. Since yesterday US would join Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries that have not signed onto the agreement.
Trump’s decision goes against the urgings of the EU and the Chinese government, which both solidified their commitment to the deal in light of the United States’ decision. Canada vows to ‘step up’ after Trump pulls out of Paris climate accord. French President Emmanuel Macron issued his own response to Trump’s decision Thursday. He offered his own version of Trump’s campaign slogan — “make American great “We will succeed because we are fully committed. Because wherever we live, whoever we are, we all share the same responsibility. Make our planet great again,” the newly elected French leader said. Theresa May said she was “disappointed” with Trump’s decision and reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to the agreement, but she didn’t go as far as other leaders. Jeremy Corbyn called it “reckless and regressive”, while the French, German and Italian governments issued a strongly worded joint statement.
Trump faces significant opposition in his own country, too. The Washington Post reports thirty US states plan to press ahead with their existing climate policies and reduce emissions. It will take four years for any country to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. It means that the United States would only be legally removed from the Agreement once Trump’s presidency had ended, creating a high level of uncertainty around the country’s future environmental policies. Several prominent US firms, including Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook, also pleaded with Trump to remain in the agreement. Elon Musk, meanwhile, said he’s leaving Trump’s advisory councils due to the decision.
“From a foreign policy perspective, it’s a colossal mistake—an abdication of American leadership,” Nicholas Burns, a senior official for the Bush administration, told The New York Times . “I can’t think of anything more destructive to our credibility than this.”
Trump promises to resurrect the United States’ mining industry, creating a new avenue through which to reverse not only the evolution of modern economies. But Trump is especially interested in the most powerful and profitable industry there is: the energy companies. And today the energy market gains more with the fossil fuels than with the green energy.
Worldwide, over 20,000 terawatters (a million of a million watts) of electricity are consumed annually, of which about 3,200 in Europe. The demand for energy is progressively increasing and those who have the chance to control this need also have the power over the peoples. Therefore a question rise: why do we continue to buy gas and oil (and thus finance) from countries that violate human rights, fuel religious conflicts and produce pollution that seriously damages our health?
Some countries are trying to get away from this slavery. They are examples of small states such as Uruguay, Costa Rica and Nicaragua that look at the “green energy” as a way of energy self-sustainability more compatible with their small GDP (gross domestic product). On this strand lies Morocco, which has just announced the realization of the largest solar power plant in the world. The Ouarzazate Solar Power Station will produce 580 MegaWatts in 2020, enough to meet 50% of the country’s energy needs.
Renewable energy sources (wind, solar, hydroelectric, marine, geothermal, biomass and biofuels) are alternatives to fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union excels in the field of renewable energy technologies. It holds 40% of world renewable energy patents and since the last 5 years almost half (44%) of the global capacity of electricity production from renewable sources is located in the EU. And it has also already signed an agreement of 345 million euros for the realization of the first phase of the solar power plant in Morocco.
But what do European citizens know about European Union projects to get rid of the fossil fuel slavery and therefore disengage from the oil and gas markets of USA, Middle East and Russia? Perhaps we should deepen this aspect and try to correlate it with some of the recent geopolitical events and with the Middle-East conflicts: Trump‘s presidency, Russian involvement in Western politics, international terrorism and, why not, even the birth of the Islamic State (Daesh). Yes, because the European Union is not a small financially insignificant small State, it is the world’s first economic power, along with China. Russia, for example, sells gas for 17 billion euros a year to the EU. The Kremlin has virtually no other customer for its gas. A “green” strategy for the States where the economy is basically based on fossil fuels trading becomes a problem of life or death. To oppose at all cost.
In Europe, the renewable energy sector employs 1.2 million people. The EU legislation on the promotion of renewable energies has evolved significantly in recent years and the Article 194 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union requires that the EU policies promote the development of new and renewable energies. Basically, the European Union is the only State that has declared war to gas and oil corporation. But let’s see how this process has developed.
On 10 January 2007, the EU published its resolution entitled “Renewable Energy Roadmap – Renewable Energy in the 21st Century: Building a Sustainable Future”. This text outlined the medium-term EU strategy for green energy. The goal is to use renewable energy sources to meet the 20% of EU energy consumption requirements by 2020. It also sets for the same year the 10% of biofuels respect to fuel consumption in transport. On the 6th of June 2012, the legislative update entitled “Renewable energies: a prominent role in the European energy market” is published. The Commission has identified the areas in which efforts need to be stepped up so that renewable energy production in the EU will continue to increase by at least 30% by 2030. In particular, the strategies to reduce the costs of industry technologies are outlined, so that to increase competitiveness with nuclear and fossil energy, and to proceed with the progressive abolition of subsidies to gas and oil multinationals.
So the role of the European Union in this energy war is clear, where Europe advocates for a better environmental sustainability, reducing pollution diseases and taking away the main source of income from those Arab countries which are still far from guaranteeing the elementary human rights. The counterattack of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, USA is equally evident. For this reason Trump is pulling the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the international treaty aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change.
And for this reason there is the attempt to delegitimize the European Union from within by interfering with fake news contrived to manipulate the minds of European citizens for them not to understand the real goal: to destroy the European Union because it is the only element of disturbance vis-à-vis the power of the fossil energy multinationals.
As has been the case with the US presidential elections and with the UK’s Brexit, the strategy is to infiltrate into the electoral systems so that to provide advantage to the political systems opposed to Green Energy. The ultimate goal is to enrich the political and economic forces of gas and oil that have managed the dominion of the world in the last century as we know it, through wars, interests, abuses of the human being.
Unfortunately, the nationalists, populists, and all the like, are brainwashed by the Russian and trumpistic propaganda, distracted by emergencies created at hoc. The people remain disoriented and frightened, entangled within social network fake information, or immersed in immigration issue and the news of Arab and Islamic terrorist attacks. The only element against the so-called “strong powers” and against the real world establishment is the one who has implemented strategies to ensure the protection of human rights, the environment and health: the European Union.
