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Comment by glenndebacker | Hacker News Reader

"time acquires a bargaining chip with Europe"

Yeah good luck with that. Maybe I'm living in a parallel Europe but that is not what I'm reading in the European newspapers this morning. Trump is loathed here and the notion of always cooperating with (our "friend") the US is sinking extremely fast, politically and also in the mind of the general people. I can't comment for all EU countries, but the view of the US is rather negatively here.

And honestly why would we? While a lot of EU leaders are publicly outraged, the fact that the US is more and more turning back into the dark ages gives a lot of possibilities for other countries. That void needs and will be filled in by others.

For me there is a silver lining here.

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This. There's no global bargaining chip to be gained here: if anything, the rest of the world has now fully realized that American exceptionalism is in rapid decline. Witness, for instance, the global reaction to Trump's decision, which has essentially been "that's nice, we'll stick with the agreement". This looks less like a savvy political move and more like a petulant child lashing out because Germany stated the US can't be completely trusted anymore.

Maybe this will garner some points with his most fervent backers, but that set's growing smaller by the day.

The most charitable spin I can think to put on this is that he made an enormously risky bet on a) the rise of populism in Europe and b) the ability of America to cash in on its supposed position of leadership. Turns out a) failed and b) is worth less than we imagined.

> that's nice, we'll stick with the agreement

The developing countries that (collectively) expect to receive $100 billion per year under the agreement would stick with it under any conditions.

How will that work now? Will Europe be paying that on their own?

>There are several big reasons why Europe's politicians, and career bureaucrats from all over the developed world, love to focus on climate change. First and foremost, it's one of those problems that's hard to define. They even changed the name of the problem from "global warming" to "climate change" to further muddy those waters.

In other words, any politician claiming that he's made a dent in the climate change problem is pretty hard to refute while any politician claiming her opponent has failed to make real climate change progress is similarly hard to debunk.

Meanwhile, a growing number of career bureaucrats get to keep on "working" for environmental improvements with almost no accountability. Compared to the war on terror, which does demand more tangible results, this is a much more politically pliable issue. For the political class, this is a win/win in perpetuity.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/30/trump-threatens-the-failing-e...

>Trump bad, Trump bad, the news told me.

Yawn

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