monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Just so happens that the irresponsible behavior of those particular business interests has been proven harmful to the natural systems which sustain current forms of life on the planet. But, yeah, short-term profits outweigh such minor concerns.

Re: Walter Hinteler (Post 6437064)
I respect Macron. Bigly.

“As a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us,” Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) told constituents last week at a town hall in Coldwater, Mich. “And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”

Among conservative evangelicals, that is not an unusual opinion. Nearly all evangelicals — 88 percent, according to the Pew Research Center on Religion & Public Life — believe in miracles, suggesting a faith in a proactive God. And only 28 percent of evangelicals believe human activity is causing climate change. Confidence that God will intervene to prevent people from destroying the world is one of the strongest barriers to gaining conservative evangelical support for environmental pacts like the Paris agreement.

WHITE HOUSE: The Paris climate accord "would effectively decapitate our coal industry, which now supplies about one-third of our electric power."

THE FACTS: The U.S. coal industry was in decline long before the Paris accord was signed in 2015. The primary cause has been competition from cleaner-burning natural gas, which has been made cheaper and more abundant by hydraulic fracturing. Electric utilities have been replacing coal plants with gas-fired facilities because they are more efficient and less expensive to operate.

TRUMP: Claims "absolutely tremendous economic progress since Election Day," adding "more than a million private-sector jobs."

THE FACTS: That's basically right, but he earns no credit for jobs created in the months before he became president. To rack up that number, the president had to reach back to October. Even then, private-sector job creation from October through April (171,000 private-sector jobs a month) lags just slightly behind the pace of job creation for the previous six months (172,000), entirely under President Barack Obama.

TRUMP: "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris."

THE FACTS: That may be so, but Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, is not Trump country. It voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in November, favoring her by a margin of 56 percent to Trump's 40 percent. The city has a climate action plan committing to boost the use of renewable energy. Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, a Democrat, has been an outspoken supporter of the Paris accord, and tweeted after Trump's announcement that "as the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future."

WHITE HOUSE: "According to a study by NERA Consulting, meeting the Obama administration's requirements in the Paris Accord would cost the U.S. economy nearly $3 trillion over the next several decades. By 2040, our economy would lose 6.5 million industrial sector jobs — including 3.1 million manufacturing sector jobs."

THE FACTS: This study was paid for by two groups that have long opposed environmental regulation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Council for Capital Formation. Both get financial backing from those who profit from the continued burning of fossil fuels. The latter group has received money from foundations controlled by the Koch brothers, whose company owns refineries and more than 4,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines.

The study makes worst-case assumptions that may inflate the cost of meeting U.S. targets under the Paris accord while largely ignoring the economic benefits to U.S. businesses from building and operating renewable energy projects.

Academic studies have found that increased environmental regulation doesn't actually have much impact on employment. Jobs lost at polluting companies tend to be offset by new jobs in green technology.


WHITE HOUSE, citing a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "If all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible," curbing temperature rise by "less than .2 degrees Celsius in 2100."

THE FACTS: The MIT programmer who wrote the report says the administration is citing an outdated version, taken out of context. Jake Jacoby said the actual global impact of meeting targets under the Paris accord would be to curb rising temperatures by 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

"They found a number that made the point they want to make," Jacoby said. "It's kind of a debate trick."

One degree may not sound like much, but Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute in Germany, says: "Every tenth of a degree increases the number of unprecedented extreme weather events considerably."

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (D) told the Louisville Courier-Journal this week that solutions to violence in his community "are many, but a lot of them require resources obviously" from housing to education and health care.

Kentucky's Republican governor apparently has a different approach in mind.

Quote:

Gov. Matt Bevin said in a jam-packed meeting Thursday that his plan to confront Louisville's growing violence is to have roaming prayer groups in the West End.

Bevin urged faith leaders, public officials and residents to take a 10-block span, walk corner to corner, and pray with the community two to three times a week during the next year.

On Twitter, the far-right governor added, "Prayer WILL change things.... Prayer is powerful, and a people united in prayer will make a difference in their communities."

When President Donald Trump announced he was withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change on Thursday, many environmental, industry, and policy experts reacted not with dejected fear but with optimism that bordered on defiance.

The overwhelming conclusion seemed to be that Trump's decision placating his political base was a dangerous diplomatic move but wouldn't be the end of the world.

American cities, states, companies, and citizens could still independently decide to make changes in line with the agreement.

Peter deMenocal, a climate scientist at Columbia University, said he was "devastated" but not pessimistic.

"We just shot ourselves in the foot on this," deMenocal said. "We're basically passing the baton to every other country to innovate and lead. This is the biggest entrepreneurial opportunity of many generations. This is the next Industrial Revolution. We could be witnessing, I won't say the end of American innovation, but certainly a loss of it."

DeMenocal said he was worried the US withdrawal could lead other countries to exit as well, a fear many other experts expressed. But Elliot Diringer, the executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a nonpartisan climate-focused think tank, said he was confident most would remain committed to climate action.

What has a higher likelihood of fracturing, Diringer said, are US diplomatic relations, with other countries possibly viewing the US as having "turned its back on the international community." But that's where industry can step up, he said.

"On the one hand, I don't want to minimize the impact of US withdrawal — it's a big deal," Diringer told Business Insider. "At the same time, there's a risk of overstating it as well because of all the momentum, which is reflected in the fact that you have so many CEOs signing full-page ads and calling into the White House."

Today, the world gets only about 11% of its energy from renewables — and companies see that as a huge untapped market.

"Big business, big finance gets it," deMenocal said. "I'd be much more pessimistic if we still had to fight that fight, and we don't — they got it a long time ago. I think the fact that the current administration does or doesn't get it, obviously it's bad, but it's not the most relevant fact."

Dozens of CEOs spoke out against Trump leaving the Paris Agreement before and after he announced his decision Thursday. Many expressed a commitment to leading the way on climate action now that the federal government was avoiding doing so.

The Climate-Alliance Germany ("Klima-Allianz Deutschland") is a network of 110 civil society organizations, including environment groups, development groups, trade unions, and consumer associations.
Founded in 2007 by for instance the Evangelical Church of Westphalia.
On the annual Global Climate Day of Action, the Alliance organises nationwide demonstrations, they organise and co-ordinate demonstrations against coal-fired power stations ...

Trumps method to underpin the coal industry is , in my thinking, the main reason for bagging out of Paris.

I do believe in the power of prayer, but not as a government solution.