At the now-closed G20 summit, 19 of the 20 member nations signed a statement reaffirming the need and will to combat man-made climate change. The only holdout? The United States.
The divide over climate was particularly glaring as the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, drew to a close. The U.S. was the only member country that did not sign a statement reaffirming the alliance’s support for international efforts to fight global warming. The statement called the Paris climate accord, which Trump withdrew from last month, an “irreversible” global agreement.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Trump’s refusal to sign on to the statement was “regrettable.”
While the United States did not sign the statement, the Trump administration did make a specific contribution to the text.
The US did successfully manage to insert text referencing fossil fuels which read: “The United States of America states it will endeavour to work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently.”
The final statement notes the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement to combat climate change but reaffirms the unanimous commitment of other G20 members; it declares that "the other G20 members state that the Paris agreement is irreversible." The affirmation is seen as a victory for German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other supporters of the Paris accords.
Mohamed Adow, international climate lead at Christian Aid, said: “The US president’s weak attempts to capsize the climate movement have failed: he is now marooned on a political island of his own making, with his head buried in the sand. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is moving ahead.”
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Auto workers and the evisceration of the American middle class:
There's been a lot of talk about whether high unemployment is the "new normal." That would be disastrous for America's economy and workers and families, though even our Democratic leaders aren't necessarily or consistently acting like they realize that. But while we wait for the verdict on whether it's true that high unemployment is just something we need to get used to and maybe embrace, there's something related that has become normal.
Even as executive pay has shot up into the stratosphere, the idea that we as a nation should be proud to have people who can make a middle-class life for their families through manual labor has been progressively broken down. This isn't just about the reality of wages for high school-educated people having gone down. It's about how we understand and talk about those declining wages and the relatively few remaining people who do make a middle-class living from blue-collar work.
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