JoongAng Daily
“The Seoul climate conference”
June 8, 2017
Emanuel Pastreich
Around the world people are mourning the declaration by President Donald Trump that the United States will pull out of the Paris Climate Accord and recklessly charge ahead in dismantling the programs set up by the Obama administration to limit carbon emissions.
But before we all start wearing black, let us think about this matter a bit more deeply. After all, could it be that rather than assured catastrophe, we have been served up a tremendous historical opportunity to make a quantum leap in the response of the international community to climate change? Could it be that we can at last set out on a brave path toward a binding agreement for a sustainable economy in name and substance without the U.S.?
After all, the U.S. and its corporations did the most to water down the Paris Climate Accord in 2015 and to make it little more than a gentleman’s agreement (read CEO’s agreement) with no framework for how the targets will be reached and no requirements regarding which technologies or policies will be used. Addicted to oil, the U.S. sadly has played the spoiled child in most every effort to come to grips with the current ecological crisis.