He, Trump, Speaks On Climate Treaty; Joe Romm Provides Translation Assistance
EDIT
Trump told Reuters a bunch of other malarky about the deal: “Not a big fan because other countries don’t adhere to it, and China doesn’t adhere to it, and China’s spewing into the atmosphere.” At this point, all one can do is take him literally. And this is literally gibberish. First off, the United States is “spewing into the atmosphere.” So are all of the countries who signed Paris. That is the point of making the deal.
Second, this is just gibberish: “Not a big fan because other countries don’t adhere to it.” The Paris agreement hasn’t gone into force yet, so no countries “adhere to it” as of now. If Trump meant other countries haven’t been adhering to previous climate agreements, the main country that actually applies to is the United States which agreed to the Kyoto Protocol CO2 reduction targets in 1997 but never ratified it and never adhered to it. The European Union, however, did adhere to it.
Third, more gibberish: “China doesn’t adhere to it.” Again, it hasn’t gone into force yet. Moreover, despite the fact that it hasn’t gone into force yet, China is already beating its carbon target. China said that by 2030 it would peak in CO2 emissions and double the amount of carbon-free energy it uses. It appears to be plateauing in CO2 emissions already. It has recently redoubled its war on coal and is exceeding all of its pledged targets for clean energy deployment.
Then again, this kind of nonsense on China and global warming should not surprise anyone given the bizarre conspiracy theory he tweeted in 2012:
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
In case you thought Trump had disavowed that, Politifact explained that Trump “has said as recently as Jan. 18, 2016, that action on climate change ‘is done for the benefit of China.’”
EDIT
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/18/3779417/donald-denier-destroy-paris-climate-deal/
