Can we allow ourselves a ray of optimism from the perspective of personal legacy, international influence or even playground-style "bullying" memes?
One of the more ridiculous spectacles in international politics has long been:
the wealthy and influential US whining that it cannot reduce carbon emissions because this would enable newly middle-income, over-populated and fragile China to ride its own carbon emissions to economic dominance. (My paraphrasing of my impressions over many years)
How much more ridiculous would it be for:
the US to approve the Keystone XL pipeline with the excuse that “Canada will extract and emit its tar sands with or without US cooperation”?
(My primary impression of recent reports on State Department deliberations)
Reframing this in the context of the
personal legacy of new Secretary of State John Kerry:
Will the young man who stood up courageously and articulately to criticize the Vietnam war be remembered as an old man who condemned the world’s children to global climate disaster under the rallying cry
“Canada made me do it”?
Or will he be remembered as a
statesman who seized the moral high ground and then wielded it to influence the future policies both of a small neighbor, and also China and the rest of the world.