Trump and the Europeans

Somewhere along about 9PM last night....I was in the midst of watching some two-star marginal cop-murder show on German public-TV (ARD).  Then across the bottom of the screen flashed some news update.  Typically, this NEVER happens (maybe at best twice a year).  It's usually that some terror act has occurred, the Pope has died, etc).  Well....it was the announcement of Trump directing that the US is leaving the Paris Accords.

Later at 9:45PM, the news started up and it was most of an hour that they spent on this....blasting away at Trump and this terrible, terrible, terrible thing.

One gets the sense that they will seek to punish Trump and the US out of this act.  I think in some way....Trump simply laid down a card on the table, which brings up the next topic of trade and NATO.  Some Germans and EU players will go the next step on their own, and before the end of 2017.....I would expect Trump to announce base closures in most of Europe (note: I predicted this already before the November election of 2016).  Some bases in the UK will remain.  Before the end of 2020....I expect the base closures to have occurred.

The bottom line of this whole thing?  There are actually several bottom lines.

1.  The President isn't elected to be the wonder-kid or leader of the world.  He's voted into place by fifty states (only their votes count, if you haven't figured that out).  Once the jobs angle got put into place, and the losses added up if you went down this route....you'd have to be an idiot to beg for your job to be terminated.  Go ask ten of your neighbors if they'd volunteer to terminate their job for the Paris Accords.  You just won't find people of that level of dedication.

2.  The one and only real legacy that the Obama Administration had after eight years....sadly....was this Paris Accords deal.  I watched a journalist back in January try to hype up the peace brought to the Middle East (non-existent), the rebuilt relations with Russia (never occurred), the bold economic position of the US (mostly stagnant for the whole eight years), and so on.  The Paris Accords were the only thing that you could agree with as being major, and now?  That's gone.

3.  How much European funding will the Democrats get in the summer of 2018 for the mid-term election?  Tons of money will flow from various groups with new agendas.  Foreign influence will be uttered and the affect of the massive election funds will be marginal.  For 2020's election?  Probably 200 million Euro will flow in to counter Trump and the GOP.

4.  In terms of air quality....the US has cleaner air now when compared against the 1980s.  There's no sign of that reversing, even with Trump's action with the Paris Accords.

5.  The polar bear thing.  In 2005, there were estimated to be 22,500 polar bears left on Earth.  Hunting regulations which had gone into place in the 1990s in Canada and the US had changed the dynamic.  Today, the statistics folks note the number to be near 28,500.  If you do trend analysis....then by 2030, it'll be near 35,000 and by 2050....near 44,000.  In fact, I would anticipate the topic of thinning out the numbers to start by between 2020 and 2030 because there's just too many polar bears within the region of Alaska and Canada.  I sat last night and the Germans put 30 seconds of Polar Bear video on and hyped the bogus nature of more Polar Bears existing.  The problem is that the numbers exist and show a long-term trend (more than a decade now) of population growth.

6.  For those mayors and governors who hint that they will follow the Paris Accords....let your folks know which jobs will be terminated and where the 'green' jobs will be found to replace them.  After a week-long silence on this hint....maybe you ought to have some honesty left and admit that you weren't thinking much on jobs.

7.  One of the great misleading numbers is always the comparison of carbon-production of individual European countries against the entire US.  About four years ago, I sat down and spend an afternoon looking up individual carbon numbers on individual US states.  If you took a state like Alabama (alone) and compared against Belgium....they were almost equal.  Shocking?  In fact, roughly 45 of the fifty states could easily be compared against a European state.  Connecticut, New York and California?  No.  Those three states, with their power-grid production type, and carbon output....go way beyond anything in Europe.  Why?  This is the big unknown.  You can compare numbers but those three states are simply a mystery on this whole math problem, and part of the 'grudge' held against the US on carbon-production (which plants love, if you haven't noticed that).

I suspect Democrats are mostly gleeful over this whole anger of Europe thing and anticipate that 2020's election with a Democratic winner will help bring back the whole Paris Accords thing, and make the Europeans all happy.  Maybe it would.....maybe not.  Once you have to admit job losses are part of the Democratic program, it's hard to figure where your votes will come from.