US Pressuring Other Countries To Abandon Clean Energy & Climate Goals
Quote:If the US is going to build massive new LNG terminals in the Gulf of Mozambique or whatever that body of water between Texas and Florida is called today, it will need plenty of customers for that climate-killing fuel. By definition, exports are not intended for domestic customers, so all that lovely liquid death is intended for people and industries in places other than America.
When the so-called president declared an “energy emergency” earlier this year, he meant that he intended to reward the fossil fuel interests who spent so much money to help him get elected. When he proclaimed his intention to establish “energy dominance,” he meant the US would now supplant OPEC as the top dog on the international energy stage.
During the now infamous three-hour cabinet meeting last week, where all the MAGA faithful competed to be the biggest suck-up to the Pharaoh Of The Potomac, our Dear Leader crowed that he was trying his best to get other nations that have clean energy and climate initiatives as part of their national planning to see the error of their ways.
“I’m trying to have people learn about wind real fast, and I think I’ve done a good job, but not good enough because some countries are still trying,” he said, and added that countries were “destroying themselves” with wind energy. “I hope they get back to fossil fuels,” he said. According to a report by Lisa Friedman of the New York Times, two weeks ago, the failing administration promised to punish countries by imposing tariffs, visa restrictions, and port fees on them if they vote for a global agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping sector.
A few days later in Geneva, the Trump US joined Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries to oppose limits on the production of petroleum-based plastics. “They are clearly using various tools in an attempt to increase the use of fossil fuels around the world instead of decrease,” said Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s former special envoy for climate action,
Chris Wright, the fracking billionaire who is now the head of the US Energy Department, warned that the United States could end its support for the International Energy Agency because it predicted that global demand for oil would peak this decade instead of continue to climb. He proclaimed to Europeans in April that they faced a choice between the “freedom and sovereignty” of abundant fossil fuels and the policies of “climate alarmism” that would make them less prosperous.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said the goal of the administration was “restoring America’s energy dominance, ensuring energy independence to protect our national security and driving down costs for American families and businesses. The…..administration will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals.”
Most CleanTechnica readers will be surprised to hear that taking prudent steps to keep the Earth habitable for humans is a “vague climate goal,” but that is the sort of drivel one gets form people infected with a MAGA mind virus.
Alarm On The Continent
Many European officials are alarmed by the amount of pressure the US is exerting on their countries, especially in light of the catastrophic heat waves that have blanketed the Continent in recent years. Lisa Friedman writes that the vast majority of scientists agree a transition away from oil, gas, and coal and toward clean energy resources like wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro power is essential to avoid making climate change more severe.
“At this moment in time it is absolutely imperative that countries double down, triple down, on their collaboration in the face of the climate crisis to not allow the active efforts for a fossil fuel world by the Trump administration succeed,” Jennifer Morgan said.
The alleged president has been pursuing a vendetta against wind energy ever since Scotland approved an offshore wind installation that is visible from his golf emporium in that country 14 years ago. When he met with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, earlier this year, he denounced wind power as a “con job” and claimed that wind turbines drive birds “loco.”
Shortly thereafter he met with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and called wind energy “a disaster.” He added that “Wind needs massive subsidies, and you are paying in Scotland and in U.K., and in all over the place where they have them, massive subsidies to have these ugly monsters all over the place.”
This maladministration is “actively trying to undermine countries” on global warming, David Goldwyn, an energy consultant, told Friedman. Several diplomats from other countries said that the administration has used increasingly aggressive tactics to influence international energy policies.
In February, Chris Wright told a conference in London via video that net zero is a “sinister goal” and criticized a British law that makes becoming net zero by 2050 a national goal. In March, the maladministration denounced the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted by nations unanimously in 2015 and include such woke ideas as addressing poverty, hunger, and climate change. The administration said “the government of the United States must refocus on the interests of Americans,” which apparently means combating “climate ideology.”
Just this month, the US government announced it would reject the agreement reached by the members of the International Maritime Organization to impose a fee on carbon emissions from shipping. The US said it would “not hesitate to retaliate or explore remedies for our citizens” against other countries that support the shipping fee.
“You see a more systematic attempt to be a fossil fuel first strategy to everything that they do,” Jake Schmidt, director of international programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Friedman. He added that the administration may slow the transition to clean energy by other countries but cannot stop it.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, which spawned the agenda of grievance and hate known as Project 2025, told Friedman the administration was doing the right thing by pressuring countries to reject renewable energy.
“Europe is coming to the United States saying, ‘Help defend us against Russia, help us with Ukraine,’” she said. “Where at the same time, they’re spending $350 billion a year on green energy investments that are slowing their economies. It doesn’t seem to make very much sense to the administration. I think we’re going to see more pressure.”
Paul Krugman On Allies & Power
Paul Krugman is highly critical of how the US is alienating its allies. On August 29, he wrote on Substack, “The Pax Americana that emerged after World War II — and basically ended on January 20, 2025 — was, in many ways, an American Empire…. We built international economic and military alliances to support a world order in effect designed to U.S. specifications.
“In 1947 a conference in Geneva established the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which set the ground rules for — tariffs and trade. The GATT in turn became the foundation for the World Trade Organization, established in 1994.
“NATO is another international institution create by the US in partnership with its allies. It has always been a partnership of equals. While the NATO military commander has always been an American, the Secretary General has always been a European,” Krugman wrote.
“The current occupant of the White House clearly has no use for subtlety and understatement. In just 7 months Trump has completely ripped up the foundations of the Pax Americana,” Krugman said. “Almost all his tariffs are clearly in violation of the GATT, yet Trump has vandalized the world trading system as casually as he has paved over the Rose Garden. We haven’t yet had a test of whether he would honor our obligations under NATO, but he’s said that his willingness to abide by the most central obligation, the guarantee of mutual defense, ‘depends on your definition.’
“Trump’s foreign policy doctrine appears to be Oderint dum metuant — let them hate as long as they fear — supposedly the favorite motto of the Emperor Caligula. America, he seems to believe, is so powerful that it doesn’t need allies; he can bully the world into doing his bidding.
“Whatever Trump may imagine, the world doesn’t fear us. For example, Trump may have imagined that his tariffs would bring India crawling to him, begging for relief. Instead, India seems to be moving to closer ties with China. In fact, not only does the world not fear us; increasingly, it doesn’t need us. This is even true for nations that used to depend on U.S. military aid.
“One of the many problems with the slogan Make America Great Again was that America already was great. Now, not so much. In a world in which America is no longer the dominant economic and military power it once was — measured by purchasing power, China’s economy is already 30 percent larger than ours — our role in world affairs depends, even more than it did in the past, on having willing allies who trust our promises.”
Krugman ends with this analysis: “We used to be very good at having allies. But Trump has flushed all of that down the golden toilet.”
Alienating Allies Is A Fool’s Game
The damage being done is incalculable. After the first attempt at governing by the man who would be king, the world decided to forgive and forget when adults started running the US government again. They thought America had learned its lesson. They will not be so quick to forget after Americans decided last November, “Yeah, we want more of that.” Repairing the damage from this clown show will take decades, during which America’s leadership on the world stage will be like that of all former empires — nattering on the sidelines about how things used to be and plotting how to regain their former prominence.
The deliberate assault on America’s allies is likely to benefit one nation most of all — China. With its focus on clean energy and electrification of all segments of its economy, China will become the leader of the world’s nations, not least because the US chose to give up its pursuit of education and science to concentrate on grievances and settling scores — real and imagined.
That is not to say that China is prefect; it is not. But it is intent on preserving the Earth as a place where humans can continue to flourish. The US, on the other hand, is doing everything it can to ramp up the destruction of the environment in every way possible. That is a strategy sure to make other nations turn their backs on America and go in search of other allies.
In retrospect, Project 2025 won’t make the US great, it will make the US irrelevant. When historians ask who is responsible for the destruction of America, their search will lead them to the Heritage Foundation and its paterfamilias, Charles Koch. Trump is merely a puppet; Koch is the one pulling the strings. If you are in doubt about the accuracy of that assertion, pick up a copy of Jane Mayer’s Dark Money and be prepared to be frightened out of your wits.
Under the influence of Koch and the MAGAlomaniacs, the US will soon find itself on the outside looking in. When it needs a friend, no one will answer the call. Then and only then with the full extent of the damage done to America by this administration become apparent for all to see.
[url=If the US is going to build massive new LNG terminals in the Gulf of Mozambique or whatever that body of water between Texas and Florida is called today, it will need plenty of customers for that climate-killing fuel. By definition, exports are not intended for domestic customers, so all that lovely liquid death is intended for people and industries in places other than America.
When the so-called president declared an “energy emergency” earlier this year, he meant that he intended to reward the fossil fuel interests who spent so much money to help him get elected. When he proclaimed his intention to establish “energy dominance,” he meant the US would now supplant OPEC as the top dog on the international energy stage.
During the now infamous three-hour cabinet meeting last week, where all the MAGA faithful competed to be the biggest suck-up to the Pharaoh Of The Potomac, our Dear Leader crowed that he was trying his best to get other nations that have clean energy and climate initiatives as part of their national planning to see the error of their ways.
“I’m trying to have people learn about wind real fast, and I think I’ve done a good job, but not good enough because some countries are still trying,” he said, and added that countries were “destroying themselves” with wind energy. “I hope they get back to fossil fuels,” he said. According to a report by Lisa Friedman of the New York Times, two weeks ago, the failing administration promised to punish countries by imposing tariffs, visa restrictions, and port fees on them if they vote for a global agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping sector.
A few days later in Geneva, the Trump US joined Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries to oppose limits on the production of petroleum-based plastics. “They are clearly using various tools in an attempt to increase the use of fossil fuels around the world instead of decrease,” said Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s former special envoy for climate action,
Chris Wright, the fracking billionaire who is now the head of the US Energy Department, warned that the United States could end its support for the International Energy Agency because it predicted that global demand for oil would peak this decade instead of continue to climb. He proclaimed to Europeans in April that they faced a choice between the “freedom and sovereignty” of abundant fossil fuels and the policies of “climate alarmism” that would make them less prosperous.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said the goal of the administration was “restoring America’s energy dominance, ensuring energy independence to protect our national security and driving down costs for American families and businesses. The…..administration will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals.”
Most CleanTechnica readers will be surprised to hear that taking prudent steps to keep the Earth habitable for humans is a “vague climate goal,” but that is the sort of drivel one gets form people infected with a MAGA mind virus.
Alarm On The Continent
Many European officials are alarmed by the amount of pressure the US is exerting on their countries, especially in light of the catastrophic heat waves that have blanketed the Continent in recent years. Lisa Friedman writes that the vast majority of scientists agree a transition away from oil, gas, and coal and toward clean energy resources like wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro power is essential to avoid making climate change more severe.
“At this moment in time it is absolutely imperative that countries double down, triple down, on their collaboration in the face of the climate crisis to not allow the active efforts for a fossil fuel world by the Trump administration succeed,” Jennifer Morgan said.
The alleged president has been pursuing a vendetta against wind energy ever since Scotland approved an offshore wind installation that is visible from his golf emporium in that country 14 years ago. When he met with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, earlier this year, he denounced wind power as a “con job” and claimed that wind turbines drive birds “loco.”
Shortly thereafter he met with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and called wind energy “a disaster.” He added that “Wind needs massive subsidies, and you are paying in Scotland and in U.K., and in all over the place where they have them, massive subsidies to have these ugly monsters all over the place.”
This maladministration is “actively trying to undermine countries” on global warming, David Goldwyn, an energy consultant, told Friedman. Several diplomats from other countries said that the administration has used increasingly aggressive tactics to influence international energy policies.
In February, Chris Wright told a conference in London via video that net zero is a “sinister goal” and criticized a British law that makes becoming net zero by 2050 a national goal. In March, the maladministration denounced the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted by nations unanimously in 2015 and include such woke ideas as addressing poverty, hunger, and climate change. The administration said “the government of the United States must refocus on the interests of Americans,” which apparently means combating “climate ideology.”
Just this month, the US government announced it would reject the agreement reached by the members of the International Maritime Organization to impose a fee on carbon emissions from shipping. The US said it would “not hesitate to retaliate or explore remedies for our citizens” against other countries that support the shipping fee.
“You see a more systematic attempt to be a fossil fuel first strategy to everything that they do,” Jake Schmidt, director of international programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Friedman. He added that the administration may slow the transition to clean energy by other countries but cannot stop it.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, which spawned the agenda of grievance and hate known as Project 2025, told Friedman the administration was doing the right thing by pressuring countries to reject renewable energy.
“Europe is coming to the United States saying, ‘Help defend us against Russia, help us with Ukraine,’” she said. “Where at the same time, they’re spending $350 billion a year on green energy investments that are slowing their economies. It doesn’t seem to make very much sense to the administration. I think we’re going to see more pressure.”
Paul Krugman On Allies & Power
Paul Krugman is highly critical of how the US is alienating its allies. On August 29, he wrote on Substack, “The Pax Americana that emerged after World War II — and basically ended on January 20, 2025 — was, in many ways, an American Empire…. We built international economic and military alliances to support a world order in effect designed to U.S. specifications.
“In 1947 a conference in Geneva established the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which set the ground rules for — tariffs and trade. The GATT in turn became the foundation for the World Trade Organization, established in 1994.
“NATO is another international institution create by the US in partnership with its allies. It has always been a partnership of equals. While the NATO military commander has always been an American, the Secretary General has always been a European,” Krugman wrote.
“The current occupant of the White House clearly has no use for subtlety and understatement. In just 7 months Trump has completely ripped up the foundations of the Pax Americana,” Krugman said. “Almost all his tariffs are clearly in violation of the GATT, yet Trump has vandalized the world trading system as casually as he has paved over the Rose Garden. We haven’t yet had a test of whether he would honor our obligations under NATO, but he’s said that his willingness to abide by the most central obligation, the guarantee of mutual defense, ‘depends on your definition.’
“Trump’s foreign policy doctrine appears to be Oderint dum metuant — let them hate as long as they fear — supposedly the favorite motto of the Emperor Caligula. America, he seems to believe, is so powerful that it doesn’t need allies; he can bully the world into doing his bidding.
“Whatever Trump may imagine, the world doesn’t fear us. For example, Trump may have imagined that his tariffs would bring India crawling to him, begging for relief. Instead, India seems to be moving to closer ties with China. In fact, not only does the world not fear us; increasingly, it doesn’t need us. This is even true for nations that used to depend on U.S. military aid.
“One of the many problems with the slogan Make America Great Again was that America already was great. Now, not so much. In a world in which America is no longer the dominant economic and military power it once was — measured by purchasing power, China’s economy is already 30 percent larger than ours — our role in world affairs depends, even more than it did in the past, on having willing allies who trust our promises.”
Krugman ends with this analysis: “We used to be very good at having allies. But Trump has flushed all of that down the golden toilet.”
Alienating Allies Is A Fool’s Game
The damage being done is incalculable. After the first attempt at governing by the man who would be king, the world decided to forgive and forget when adults started running the US government again. They thought America had learned its lesson. They will not be so quick to forget after Americans decided last November, “Yeah, we want more of that.” Repairing the damage from this clown show will take decades, during which America’s leadership on the world stage will be like that of all former empires — nattering on the sidelines about how things used to be and plotting how to regain their former prominence.
The deliberate assault on America’s allies is likely to benefit one nation most of all — China. With its focus on clean energy and electrification of all segments of its economy, China will become the leader of the world’s nations, not least because the US chose to give up its pursuit of education and science to concentrate on grievances and settling scores — real and imagined.
That is not to say that China is prefect; it is not. But it is intent on preserving the Earth as a place where humans can continue to flourish. The US, on the other hand, is doing everything it can to ramp up the destruction of the environment in every way possible. That is a strategy sure to make other nations turn their backs on America and go in search of other allies.
In retrospect, Project 2025 won’t make the US great, it will make the US irrelevant. When historians ask who is responsible for the destruction of America, their search will lead them to the Heritage Foundation and its paterfamilias, Charles Koch. Trump is merely a puppet; Koch is the one pulling the strings. If you are in doubt about the accuracy of that assertion, pick up a copy of Jane Mayer’s Dark Money and be prepared to be frightened out of your wits.
Under the influence of Koch and the MAGAlomaniacs, the US will soon find itself on the outside looking in. When it needs a friend, no one will answer the call. Then and only then with the full extent of the damage done to America by this administration become apparent for all to see.]
cleantechnica[/url]
