Reuters reports: Germany and China vowed on Thursday to expand their partnership, pledging to continue to fight climate change hours before U.S. President Donald Trump announces whether Washington will quit a global climate deal.
Germany is the first stop for Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on a European tour that comes amid growing concern in Germany over some of Trump’s policies, especially on climate change and protectionism.
“China has become a more important and strategic partner,” Merkel said at a joint news conference with Li, pointing to political, economic, social and cultural ties.
“We are living in times of global uncertainty and see that we have a responsibility to expand our partnership in all the different areas and to push for a world order based on law,” she said.
The two leaders held wide-ranging talks that covered issues including trade, a European Union-China investment deal, civil rights, the North Korea crisis and climate change. They also signed a multitude of business deals.
“We are both ready to contribute to stability in the world,” the Chinese premier said. [Continue reading…]
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else, as Churchill might have said.
But the twisted line now coming from team Trump is that terrorism poses a greater global threat than climate change — “a beheading is worse than a sunburn,” as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee put it on Sunday.
That’s an argument that might sound persuasive to the scientifically illiterate audience that watches Fox News and yet however ignorant Trump, Huckerbee and their cohort indeed are, I doubt that their powers of reasoning are actually this impaired.
This isn’t a case of arriving at differing conclusions after sober risk assessment. It’s simply a case of outright denial.
The climate skeptics are not actually skeptical; they refuse to face evidence that points towards implications that they find unacceptable.
Their investment in the past is so deep that they refuse to look at the future.
If the reporting has been accurate, Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris accord comes in spite of appeals not to do so from his own daughter.
As loyal as she might feel towards her father, she should now understand that he has no loyalty to her.
To Ivanka and the rest of the world, Donald Trump’s message is ultimately this: I don’t give a damn about what happens to you or anyone else after I die.
