“U. S. leadership is indispensable…”
The Obama administration experienced such a backlash against climate change it forced his administration to classify it as a threat to national security.
If you were bewildered by this, you weren’t alone, as calling it a threat to national security put it up there with ISIS and North Korea. When President Donald Trump updated his national security strategy, climate change wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
Trump knew all along that agreeing to follow environmental regulations set by an international body inherently weakened the United States, and that strictly goes against Trump’s “America First” platform.
This process of extracting the United States from international entanglements was brought to a head when he withdrew the country from the Paris climate accord. This noticeably upset former President Barack Obama, who spoke of Trump in thinly veiled references claiming, “At the moment, we have a temporary absence of American leadership on the issue (of climate change).”
A key excerpt from Trump’s new plan emphasizing “America First” reads:
U. S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth energy agenda that is detrimental to U. S. economic and energy security interests. Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty. The United States will continue to advance an approach that balances energy security, economic development, and environmental protection. The United States will remain a global leader in reducing traditional pollution, as well as greenhouse gases, while expanding our economy. This is achievement, which can serve as a model to other countries, flows from innovation, technology breakthroughs, and energy efficiency gains, not from onerous regulation.
Climate change of all things should never have been labeled as a threat to national security. Trump’s first year has been very intense, but he’s actually accomplishing much of what he set out to do.
