The Trump administration’s decision to leave the Paris Climate Accord yesterday is designed to take America back to a dirty, dangerous past. The movie “Back to the Future” takes its protagonists back to 1955. After a series of mishaps, they set everything right and head towards 2015. We need Marty McFly, Doc and his DeLorean or more realistically, Congressional Republicans and Democrats, to take America back to the future, which turns out ironically to have taken place in 2015 when the Accord was signed by 196 nations.
Rather than the dark, despotic claims made by Trump and his henchman, Steve Bannon, the Paris accord was designed to adopt green energy sources such as solar and wind, reduce climate change emissions and help the world cope with the inevitable results of climate change which anyone paying attention has already seen; increased storms and resulting floods, droughts, and a rise in the global average temperature. America and other developed nations committed to providing funds for this effort, not alone, but in concert. The Trump supporters who fantasize that coal plants will reopen are dangerously misguided and the ones who are gleefully rubbing their hands together over increased income from expanding oil refineries are just plain dangerous.
See a thoughtful and detailed analysis here http://www.npr.org/2017/06/01/531090243/trumps-speech-on-paris-climate-agreement-withdrawal-annotated
which reality checks the President’s speech point by point. Unsurprisingly, most of what the President stated was false or misleading.
President Trump also wants to take America back to the 1950s, when women had little or no access to effective birth control and of course, no legal access to abortion. The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (which should be renamed the Department of Death and Denial of Services) has drafted a rule which would deny coverage for birth control to thousands of women. Both for-profit and non profit organizations will be able to claim a moral or religious objection to funding for contraception. The lack of morality in condemning women and their families to having more children than they can afford seems to have escaped President Trump and his allies. So-called Christians like Mike Pence need to consult their bibles. Jesus said, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s time to ask President Trump what his family uses for contraception. It’s also time for Americans who are dismayed at our return back to the past to run for office, register voters, and demand that their elected representatives take America forward, not backwards.