Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Ex-President Obama seems to have suggested in a speech that tearing up the Paris Agreement is a symptom of “an aggressive kind of nationalism” which threatens Democracy. My question – why doesn’t Obama mention all the greens who seem to think Democracy is an impediment to environmental progress?
Obama warns against ‘aggressive’ nationalism, leaving Paris climate agreement
BY ALICIA COHN – 07/01/17 07:41 AM EDT
Former President Obama on Saturday issued a strong warning against the new trend toward “an aggressive kind of nationalism” and emphasized the importance of the Paris climate agreement, which the U.S. plans to break.
Obama called out at least one of his successor’s policy changes without mentioning President Trump by name.
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Otherwise, he warned, “We start seeing a rise in sectarian politics, we start seeing a rise in an aggressive kind of nationalism, we start seeing both in developed and developing countries an increased resentment about minority groups and the bad treatment of people who don’t look like us or practice the same faith as us.”
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He went on to note “the temporary absence of American leadership” on fighting climate change.
“In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate change,”
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“If we don’t stand up for tolerance and moderation and respect for others, if we begin to doubt ourselves and all that we have accomplished, then much of the progress that we have made will not continue,” he said.
“What we will see is more and more people arguing against democracy, we will see more and more people who are looking to restrict freedom of the press, and we’ll see more intolerance, more tribal divisions, more ethnic divisions, and religious divisions and more violence,” he continued.
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Can anyone think of a single mainstream climate skeptic who opposes Democracy?
Unfortunately I have not located a copy of ex-President Obama’s full speech. But even if my impression of what Obama said is wrong, it seems pretty cheeky for Obama to mix opposition to climate advocacy and accusations of threats to Democracy in the same speech, given the number of prominent greens who seem to think Democracy is not up to the job of saving us from Climate Change.
- June 2017: Maryland Professor of Philosophy Firmin DeBrabander claims “climate change is not liable to be solved by democracies. Autocracies might do better”
- April 2017: Neil DeGrasse Tyson claims elected “science deniers” are a threat to Democracy
- March 2017: Disgraced Identity Thief Peter Gleick claims Democracy is under assault from [climate] liars
- May 2016: Mark Diesendorf, Associated Professor University New South Wales, claims “Governments may need extraordinary emergency powers to implement rapid mitigation”
- November 2015: Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft Corporation, claims “If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem, then representative democracy is a problem.”
- April 2015: Two University of Melbourne (Australia) Professors claim “the failure to tackle climate change speaks to an overall failure of our liberal democratic system”
- January 2011: Former NASA GISS Chairman James Hansen praises the Chinese dictatorship’s ability to take “the long view” on climate change.
etc.
Obama refused to submit the treaty to the Senate, which last time I looked is the people’s representation in a democracy.
Chip, the House represents the people, the Senate represents the States.
It was originally intended for the Senate to represent the States, but an amendment changed all that. They no longer have any elegance to their state’s legislature but are directly elected by the people, just like the House.
In my opinion, that amendment was one of the two biggest mistakes in the constitution.
The other one was the amendment that authorized the income tax.
Obama? Obama who?
I guess Obama sees his U.S. citizenship as a necessary evil, now that he is visiting his boyhood home of banana and sex slave plantations in Jakarta.
On the funny side, China Goes Coal! Big Time!
100 new local facilities this year. 700 new local facilities planned for the next 10 years. 1600 facilities planned for 62 countries (Canada, France and Germany in that mix? … probably Africa, India, south America and southeast Asia).
Time to buy stock in KOL ETF! Yee Haa! (Also URA ETF — global uranium stock.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html
I think “The Beijing Times” has a nice ring to it.
They should move there.
Or change their name to the Beijing Times, given their constant propaganda.
Battle Hymn of the MSM (they wish!)
Mine ears have heard the glory of Barack Obama’s word
He is trampling out the vintage where the US wealth is stored
He has loosed the fateful funding for the climate change accord
His words go marching on!
Trump was elected by the working class, which Democrats still confuse with a welfare class. A welfare class naturally votes for the Democratic Party, which provides the safety net (welfare), paid for by the working class.
I traveled through California recently and noticed huge billboards along the freeway, like
55% Tulare County Residents Have Medi-Cal
50% Fresno County Covered by Medi-Cal
I wondered why the billboards? Medi-Cal is a California version of Medicaid, a federal health coverage for the poor. This happens to be a warning to Trump voters in these counties – Trump proposes a cut to Medicaid. Again, Democrats confuse the working class with the poor.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/For-struggling-Kern-Trump-means-hope-and-change-11043909.php
Last I saw, there weren’t proposed “cuts” to Medicaid. There were proposed reductions in the growth of Medicaid.
Only in politics can smaller increases be called cuts.
Yes, the Medicaid budget is actually increased in the new Republican health care bill but you wouldn’t know it by the MSM who describe it as a cut.
Republicans really seem to have a problem with communicating their ideas to the public, and allow the Democrats and the MSM to distort the facts without contradicting them. I know it is difficult to be heard over the MSM propaganda megaphone, but they have to find a way to counter the distortions put out by the MSM and the Democrats.
The Republicans allow these supposed cuts to Medicaid to go unchallenged, along with the claim that the Republican Health care bill will take away insurance from 23 million people.
Republicans should describe their Health Care law the way Rush Limbaugh describes it.
Rush says the law does not take insurance away from 23 million people, what it does is free 23 million people from being required to purchase health insurance under Obamacare, whether they need it or not.
Obamacare mandates that *everyone* sign up for health care or pay a penalty, and when this mandate is removed the Democrats and the MSM say it is taking health care away from 23 million people but in reality it is just taking the mandate away.
Those 23 million people are free to continue to buy health care coverage or not, depending on their desire, not on what Obama and the Democrats want them to do.
The Republican Health Care law’s purpose is to introduce more personal freedom into our healthcare choices. The first step is to stop requiring everyone to purchase health insurance or pay a fine.
Of those residents that have Medi-Cal and are eligible to vote, it’s a safe bet that most of them voted for Clinton.
Our energy policy is one of the most critical to have it right. Obama (almost) succeeded in putting our energy policy for the next century in the hands of incompetent and unelected UN bureaucrats. That is not showing leadership and that is his biggest failure.
Well said, I think he just did not care about the consequences for the average Joe, he knew as an elite he could continue his carbon footprint. Let them eat cake!
Obama could have better fought climate change, and reduced U.S. emissions more, by pushing a half-a-loaf energy policy that:
1. Encouraged the use of compressed and/or liquified natural gas by trucks. (There were / are companies wanting to set up fueling stations all over the country and to make or convert engines to run on gas.
2. Encouraged households using oil for heating to switch to natural gas (in areas where gas pipes are available or could be economically laid).
3. Protected existing nuclear plants from loss of income from subsidized or mandated competition from wind and solar.
4. Reduced red tape and needless overhead in licensing new nuclear plants.
5. Opened Yucca Mountain to the storage of nuclear waste, or found some other way of disposing of it (e.g., down certain boreholes).
6. Invested in research on small-scale fusion, such as that being done by Lockheed.
Instead he let himself be snowed by his eco-fanatic appointees to bet the house on investing in wind and solar (many bankruptcies were the result) and electric cars (whose adoptation is vastly below his predicted pick-up rate, despite subsidies), and not encouraging heating and cooking by natural gas in favor of an envisaged all-electric future. Nuclear was allowed to wither on the vine. His policies were (and are) those of extremist zealotry.
PS: 7. Curbed or reduced the increasing mandates to use ethanol in fuel (an expensive, mostly counter-productive policy).
8. Put a sunset clause in his measures promoting the use of advanced biofuels, another expensive failure with many bankruptcies in the past or near-future.
Possibly stupid question…
* You have nuclear fuel which, when brought together in sufficient quantity, reacts and generates a lot of heat.
* The heat boils water, and the resulting steam spins a generator which generates electricity.
BUT
* You have nuclear waste which generates a lot of heat.
* The heat boils water, unless it is constantly cooled. E.g. the Fukushima waste storage area caught fire after it lost power due to the earthquake+tsunami. With no cooling power, the containing water boiled off, and the now-dry wastes heated up enough to catch fire.
What’s wrong with this picture? Whatever happened to “Reduce Re-use Re-cycle”? Why aren’t we using the “waste heat” from “nuclear waste” to generate power? Any expenses greater than uranium mining would be offset by less need for storage and constant cooling. The only losers would be uranium mining outfits.
The used fuel rods are only hot enough to boil water for a couple of months.
I am quite confident that no author had received $65M for writing a book. No single minded publishing house can make money of that investment.
Except the shining author Obama, who did not even write an article through his academic stint.
It smells like some quid pro for me, or put other way deferred bribery for his inaction against the wall street banksters. In this he was following the footsteps of Clinton criminal gang.
We’ll wait and see if any of his stupid copy will sell for a penny or will be recycled immediately.
Typical Obama in criticising others of ignoring democracy, In typical lawyer fashion, he changes the wording of what sort of agreement it is so to keep the decision to sign or not sign away from Congress and the Senate, because they’d both vote no as the burden of potential outcome is’t economically in the nation’s interest. Somebody really needs to explain democracy to this asshat. I wouldn’t even bother explaining hypocrisy, the concept means nothing to him or anyone the further left of the political spectrum .you go.
Eric,
“Can anyone think of a single mainstream climate skeptic who opposes Democracy?”
I can’t even think of a single “climate skeptic” . . and i think it is extremely important right now to stop using the lingo of the elitists (which is who I believe we are actually wrestling with) if we wish to overcome/defeat them. If you mean to say “climate crisis skeptic”, I suggest you say what you mean, relentlessly, ’cause that elitist/PC lingo is intentionally designed to allow easy control of public discussion, and hence public opinion, I am thoroughly convinced.
(By ‘elitists’ I mean those who see it as foolishness to allow actual government according to the will of the people (beyond superficial choices like which of them holds which high office and the like). If we who oppose them use the terminology and “framing” those anti-democratic elitists generate and enforce, primarily through the corporate mass media systems that we have been effectively trained to call “the press”, we may waste any opportunity that recent public skepticism about the honesty/integrity of that mass media has afforded us, I fear.)
(Which is to say ; )
Eric,
“Can anyone think of a single mainstream climate skeptic who opposes Democracy?”
I can’t even think of a single “climate skeptic” . . and i think it is extremely important right now to stop using the lingo of the elitists (which is who I believe we are actually wrestling with) if we wish to overcome/defeat them. If you mean to say “climate crisis skeptic”, I suggest you say what you mean, relentlessly, ’cause that elitist/PC lingo is intentionally designed to allow easy control of public discussion, and hence public opinion, I am thoroughly convinced.
(By ‘elitists’ I mean those who see it as foolishness to allow actual government according to the will of the people (beyond superficial choices like which of them holds which high office and the like). If we who oppose them use the terminology and “framing” those anti-democratic elitists generate and enforce, primarily through the corporate mass media systems that we have been effectively trained to call “the press”, we may waste any opportunity that recent public skepticism about the honesty/integrity of that mass media has afforded us, I fear.)
Back in 1776 “an aggressive kind of nationalism” is what we’ll be celebrating July 4th, Independence from any and all Government suppressing the Rights “endowed by their Creator” of the individual.
Obama made a personal agreement in Paris. He never bothered with going through the US’s Constitutional process.
His administration (along with others’ before him) is what has threatened our Constitutional Republic.
PS The US submitting to the UN or “Paris” or “Kyoto” or “Montreal” is not democracy in any way shape or form. Nor is it democracy for any other nation to do so.
Absolutely right. The ex-President apparently prefers “passive nationalism”, whereby we simply sit idly by and watch our interests eroded without complaint. Better yet, there’s “masochistic nationalism”, whereby our power and influence in the world is determined by how much we are willing to be victimized by others. The Paris Accord is a prime example.
Bill Clinton is rarely heard from as well.
The problem with Carter and Obama is that they are bitter old men.
That was supposed to be a reply to 4caster.
Great comment, Paul.
Obama is definitely passive when it comes to protecting the interests of the United States.
What is galling to me is the MSM’s hypocrisy in how they treat former presidents. One rarely heard from George W. Bush after he left office, but Obama seems to be referred to quite frequently. It could be that Bush said little or nothing, and Obama feels the need to rip the conservative side and speaks more frequently than Bush ever did, but IMHO it is the MSM who tries as best they can to steer the dialogue. Also, historically, former presidents usually took the high road and did not criticize their successor, at least while he was in office. Obama is just being his classless self…and the MSM is following suit.
Even if one believes that CO2 affects climate, the Paris agreement will have no significant effect. It is a bad deal for the USA and we just do not have the money. Financially, before we can possible support the Paris Climate Agreement, the USA must pay off its huge federal government debt and must turn huge annual trade deficits into annual trade surpluses. Maybe when the USA has payed off its debts and is again making money, we will have money to be spending on charitible purposes.
The reality is that the paleoclimate record and modeling studies show that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on clmate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero. It is all a matter of science. But even if we could somehow stop the climate from changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise is part of the current climate and would not change. There is no possible benefit. There are many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels but climate change is not one of them
With statements like this Obama may be angling for a job with some high-minded do-good organization (NGO or EU or foundation), or perhaps for a cushy do-little position as a board-of-directors member on many of them.
PS: Such organizations would love to have a high-profile front-man who’d give their effusions more coverage and (seeming) credibility.
“… an increased resentment about minority groups and the bad treatment of people who don’t look like us or practice the same faith as us.”
This from the guy who took nuns to court over no wanting to pay for birth control.
This from the guy who declared that he was only the president of “his people”.
Obama’s oft repeated mantra that “… we came together … to fight climate change…” is analogous to Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Although 400 years apart, Obama and Don Quixote were both attacking imaginary adversaries. The Paris Agreement is simply a stage prop for Obama’s illusion.
Consider the source. This is the same usage of “democratic” as in Deutsche Demokratische Republik.
Obama sez:
That pretty much sums up the Democrat Elites’ treatment of the deplorables.
Projection
Our Green Party candidates had this to say about suspending Democracy to save the world from an atmospheric trace gas……. “This is because the implications of 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of “emergency” responses such as the suspension of democratic processes.”
Obama’s side of Politics are wannabe Authoritarian Dictators…. Their language and politics reek of it.
Always have, always will.
Look around the world at what happens to the opposition whenever they get sufficient power.
“…What I can’t understand is why so few are prepared to challenge him….” It’s the same MSM that brings you CAGW. Enough said? Hence the rise in ‘alternative’ news sources.
Democrats not accepting the results of the 2016 presidential election threatens democracy.
Democrats are against democracy.
‘a symptom of “an aggressive kind of nationalism” which threatens Democracy.’
Obama acting like he cares about democracy. He is using Alinski’s advice: use the terms of the opposition.
All those commenters are not wrong. The Trump presidency is proof that climate change is an emergency that the dysfunctional American democracy is failing to respond to in a responsible manner. Other democracies are doing much better – and China may yet step in to replace America’s abandoned leadership in developing the necessary strategies and technologies.
You know, for a minute there I thought you were serious! Good one, fella!
Do you have any evidence that climate change is an emergency that needs to be responded to?
Or are you just demonstrating another of your irrational ideas?
“It is really only on web sites such as this who are speaking out? Just how many think that the Emperor’s new clothes are splendid?”
Forrest, it’s on Websites such as this that people with irrational ideas find like-minded souls – and begin to believe those ideas are normal and important. It is on websites like this that Trump appears to be dressed in the finest threads.
Jack Davis, Trump actually does wear some very fine “threads”
?strip=all&w=940&h=625&crop=1
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But it’s his “accessories” that leave a lot to be desired
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I see that Jack is demonstrating how people consumed by irrational ideas reach out to like minded people.
Too bad he won’t find many here.
Good point, MarkW. 🙂
Read Rising Star and Dreams From My Father.
That man is a messed up poseur. He rode the affirmative action express to the top all the while decrying racism and claiming victimhood. His black cultural identity was assumed. He married black for politics. His life has been an act. He is an expert in saying nothing. People who admire him are simply ignorant of what he is. His ambition for higher office was a complete obsession with him. Imagine. He was depressed after 9/11 because he thought his future in politics was ruined (Obama/Osama). Now that he achieved the supreme goal of his life, the highest level of political success possible, he has nowhere else to go. Right now he is surrounded by people telling him how great he is. If he can make money for them, they’ll keep telling him that.
I notice that he hasn’t been back to visit his large family in Kenya for a while.
Well, let’s cut him some slack. He is a lawyer and a politician, so that explains a lot.
As long as you keep on dividing people into us and others, that’s your legacy Barack.
One could not expect anything else from a failed President who never had the best interests of the country and its citizens at heart. The world is a far worse place for his Presidency, and he appears a warped individual and should simply butt out of things. He is yesterday’s man, and the sooner he is forgotten the better.
Prior to signing up to the Paris Accord, there was never a democratic vote of the citizens of the USA, UK, Europe etc to see whether they wished top be bound by the terms and provisions of the Accord.
By contrast, one of the main promises in the November 2016 election campaign was withdrawing from the Paris accord, and the USA voted for this.
Obama’s action of signing an executive order is the very opposite of a democratic process; no mandate from Congress/The Senate, still less from the people. By contrast,Trump’s action is a shinning example of democracy in action; the mandate from the people was to withdraw from the Paris Accord.