Hey Earth, You Got Burned
We now know for sure that climate change is real because America’s leadership role just went up in flames. In a much anticipated move, President Trump announced that his administration is pulling out of the Paris climate treaty, describing it as a bad deal for America. The US now joins only two other countries on the No list: Nicaragua (because they felt it didn’t go far enough to protect the planet), and Syria (they’ve been busy).
+ Trump’s decision was not made in a vacuum. Just follow the money: “The big-money supporters got a return on their investment last week, when 22 Republican senators whose campaigns have collected more than $10m in oil, gas and coal money since 2012 sent a letter to the president urging him to withdraw from the Paris deal.”
+ This move is anything but a surprise. From The New Yorker: Earth Day in The Age of Trump. “The list of steps that the Trump Administration has already taken to make America polluted again is so long that fully cataloguing them in this space would be impossible.”
+ BBC: Antarctic ice crack takes major turn. (Spoiler alert: Climate change doesn’t care if we think think the Paris treaty is a good deal or not.)
+ AP: Weather forecasts have dramatically improved over the past decade, according to science (for those who believe in such things).