It’s a sad day when our president and his millions of supporters celebrate an action to rebel against our country’s actions to hold ourselves accountable to higher expectations than other countries. Our role in the Paris Climate Agreement positioned us to dominate the global energy market decades down the road. Much in the way our investments in microchips in the 50’s positioned us to dominate the tech world decades later. The global climate agreement put us in a position to export clean energy decades down the road with a ready-made costumer base of a 193 other countries.
The administration has their reasons for withdrawal. Trump painted a picture of a dystopian economy within the climate agreement backed up by dystopian data. But if your to believe that data you would have to overlook the CEO’s of businesses from nearly every major industry including the CEO’s of Exon and Chevron whom all pleaded with Trump to stay in the agreement. Businesses need stability and this will further produce inconsistent market indicators. And then there is Trump’s support of the coal industry, whom ‘has been crushed by Obama’s war against coal.’ But if you’re to believe that you would have ignore the reality natural gas has and will increasingly render coal obsolete.
At this point the whole world has heard the complaints of Trump supporters and there towns that have been and continue to be forgotten by the economies of today and tomorrow. But listening to those complaints and providing opportunities to the same people in tomorrow’s economy is not mutually exclusive to maintaining our country’s high expectations within our global standing. The opportunities in clean energy are far greater. And conversely Trump supporters shouldn’t be exempt from the expectations to make themselves valuable in the economies of tomorrow. There are no easy solutions like the ones Trump has promised. But this whole case is overstated. The median income of Trump supporters is 74,000 dollars. On some level many Trump supporters know from their own personal experience that this dystopian vision is BS.
It begs the question of why. It was Trump’s pledge on the campaign trail, but why? What’s the motivation for all those millions of people to demand low expectations of our country? Trump is not a visionary and creating long term expectations is not in his wheelhouse.. But what Trump is is a bully, and millions of people wanted a bully for a champion. Someone whom would spit in the face of people.
That’s what this is about. The way he set up the announcement with stay tuned forcasts and the cameras, told you he was looking forward to this announcement, which telegraphed he would withdraw from the agreement. The agreement is an agreement with nearly every country in the world, and now we are one of three countries not in the agreement, despite the fact we have the greatest carbon foot print per capita. It’s a big FU to the rest of the world working to curb their own behavior. It was an antisocial action, and the manner Trump delivered it in was unprofessional. He went out of his way, in typical Trump fashion, to personally call Obama and his policies weak. That’s what his supporters applaud. That’s what they wanted. Trump has not only lessened future economic and technological expectations for our country, he has also lowered expectations for behavior.
The definitions of propaganda is saying one thing while your actions have the goal of the opposite. For instance it’s propaganda if your slogan is “Make America Great Again,” yet your actions consistently work to lessen the expectations of America. And Trump is nothing if not the king of propaganda.
Lets never forget low expectations are not who we really are.
