Trump in the Snares of Dialectics

June 8, 2017

Source: Link

By Bernard-Henri Lévy (original source Huffington Post)

“Leaving the Paris Agreement is like Brexit: It’ll take years. The rest of Trump’s term, at least. And because the climate revolution is supposed to unfold over the very long term, it is possible that the American president may simply not have enough time to sabotage the process or crush the spirit kindled in Paris two years go.

What will indeed change, on the other hand, is that, because politics abhors a vacuum, the great rival empire, the one already poised to mount the first step of the podium of power—in a word, China—will rush into the breach and take advantage of this windfall to assert its leadership. Its leaders said as much upon arriving at the EU-China summit in Brussels just a few hours after Trump’s abdication speech. And how they indulged themselves when, pretending to forget that they are still the leading polluters of the planet, they shamelessly declared their intention to “cherish this hard-won outcome,” referring to the Paris Agreement. Not to mention the 64 countries they had just convened on May 15 (as chance would have it) around their New Silk Road initiative, which they now seem to be trying to regroup behind what appears likely to become (ignore the change in marching orders) their new grand directive?”

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