Not Trump, but climate culture of Republican presidents
UNITED States of America President Donald Trump is not the first Republican leader to trash the environment in general and also the fight against climate change in particular. When President Trump dropped the bombshell on June 1, 2017 that he was pulling out of the Paris Climate Change Agreement this potentially squeezed the hope of over seven billion inhabitants of planet Earth to successfully fight climate change as a global community.
In the salvo of angry reactions from Albania to Zimbabwe, President Trump was similarly described in the media and the pubs as probably the world’s worst environmental enemy.
In December 2015 at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 21st Conference of Parties Meeting (COP21) held in Paris, world leaders (including the USA under President Barak Obama — a Democrat) agreed to create low carbon and climate resilient economies worldwide. Now Trump, the Republican President, has almost single-handedly pulled out from it.
But we should not be surprised by such a decision and behaviour from a Republican American president as a trans-historical look at how the past American Republican Presidents from Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), George Herbert Walker Bush Senior (1989-1993), George Walker Bush his son (1989-1993) and now Donald Trump (2017), show a trend of lack of support towards addressing climate change and environmental problems.
Yes, it was George Bush Sr, while the US president in 1992, who opposed the idea of the USA joining other nations to ratify the UN Framework on Convention on Climate Change saying the American lifestyle was not up for public discussion.
Also, during the same period, the US government refused to ratify the UN National Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). It was only during the time of Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barak Obama that America started cooperating with other countries to hammer a climate agenda that would reverse the climate change threats globally.
Sadly, when Donald Trump became the Republican President of the USA against all odds this year that situation changed.
He, as we all know, has publicly ditched the Paris Climate change deal, opening up the world once more to fresh threats of climate change through lack of cooperation from the world’s most powerful economy.
Although most US municipalities are saying they will continue fighting climate change, it is difficult to achieve good results without their president.
From President George Bush senior, to George W. Bush and now Donald Trump, these Republican presidents have consistently not supported the initiative to fight climate change and to protect the environment — all in support of American economic interests.
Therefore, when President Trump ditched the environment and climate change on Thursday June 1, 2017 it seems he was just confirming the culture of Republican presidents of the USA in general. Reagan dismissed acid and proposals to halt it as burdensome to industry.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that Trump is using the same language to defend his Paris Climate Agreement pull-out today — almost 27 years later.
In the early 1980s, pollution had become an issue in Canada. The then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau objected to the pollution originating in US factory smokestacks in the Midwest.
The Environment Protection Agency appealed to the Republican President Reagan to make a major budget commitment to reduce acid rain; Reagan rejected the proposal and deemed it wasteful government spending. He questioned scientific evidence on the causes of acid rain.
Today, President Trump seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet as did the two Bushes who preceded him as Republican presidents.
Then entered George Herbert Walker Bush (1989-1993), the next US Republican after Reagan.
Speaking at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on December 6, 1992, President GH W Bush, in true Republican fashion, announced that the United States would not sign the UN CBD, a treaty designed to protect rare and endangered animals and plants, saying that it would retard the development of technology and the protection of ideas.
However, to his credit, George Bush Snr in 1992, while attending the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (the largest group of world leaders in history met), where he and other world leaders called on the world to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions by 2000 at the 1990 level, especially carbon dioxide.
On UN CBD, he showed true Republican presidential colours for not supporting environmental conservation for US economic interests, but he was ‘touched’ by the climate issue and started a promising process.
Sadly, in 2001 when his son George W. Bush became the next Republican President, he announced that the Kyoto agreement’s mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases and short timetable would be too expensive and unwise when the US was facing energy problems.
Bush’s do-nothing policy on global warming began almost as soon as he took office. During his presidency, the White House blocked even the most modest reforms and replaced them with token investments in futuristic solutions like hydrogen cars. Today Trump is ‘singing’ a similar song and performing the same gig with regards to climate change.
Therefore, one could argue that it seems to be the culture of Republican US presidents and not President Trump alone to trash the environment in favour of American economic interests.
In sharp contrast, when one looks at the Democratic Party presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barak Obama, there seems to be a clear pro-climate change and general pro-environment trend.
President Trump wants to cut the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget by about 33 percent.
He effectively wants to wipe out dozens of programmes that deal with climate change, environmental pollution and clean-ups. Trump also broke the bad news by publicly saying that the US would stop its entire climate funding to the UN.
The good news is that as we celebrate the World Environment Day this week, it will be business as usual in other countries that support the fight against climate change. The theme for this year’s World Environment Day June 5, 2017, is connecting with nature.
What a fitting theme because if we fail to connect with nature and conserve the environment and fight climate change, we cannot survive.
Meanwhile, here in South Africa there is still great hope to effectively address the climate change problem; particularly in South Africa’s richest, most industrialised and populous Gauteng Province.
Against a background where climate change signs such as floods, droughts, pests and diseases are becoming more significant in Africa (including South Africa and globally), threatening people’s socio-economic wellbeing worldwide, the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development held a Climate Change Workshop at Kopanong Hotel in Benoni recently, to review the Gauteng Climate 2011 Change Response Strategy and Action Plan.
The workshop acknowledged the need to work with the media, in order to spread messages to change people’s mind-sets towards appreciating the need to use solar and gas energy, public transport, cycling and modern agricultural production methods such as greenhouse (hydroponic) tunnels and get involved in recycling projects.