FILE – In this Dec. 12, 2020, file photo, French President Emmanuel Macron, center flanked by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, left, and President of the French Constitutional Council Laurent Fabius, right, speaks during the Climate Ambition Summit 2020 video conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris. World leaders are applauding Friday’s formal return of the U.S. to the mostly voluntary 2015 agreement, saying it is symbolic and important. They say they expect the United States to show leadership in the fight against warming by setting strong targets for carbon pollution cuts by 2030.(Yoan Valat, Pool via AP)

Note: 6 more photos at source

WASHINGTON (AP) — World leaders welcomed the United States’ official return to the Paris climate accord Friday, but politically trickier steps lie just ahead for President Joe Biden, including setting a tough national target in coming months for cutting damaging fossil fuel emissions.

And even as Biden noted the country’s first day back in the climate pact, the globe’s dangerous warming was just one of a long list of urgent problems he raised in a video speech to European leaders on Friday, a month into his administration. Before bringing up climate issues, he touched on the global pandemic, sputtering national economies, and tense relations with China, among other matters that threaten to impede and delay tackling the nation’s status as the world’s top carbon polluter after China.

Despite all the other challenges, Biden said, speaking to the Munich security conference, “we can no longer delay or do the bare minimum to address climate change. This is a global existential crisis, and all of us will suffer if we fail.”

Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office reversing the pullout ordered by President Donald Trump. Trump said soon after he took office that he would start the process of pulling the U.S. from the Paris accord, but it didn’t take effect until Nov. 4, 2020, because of provisions in the agreement.

Officially, the United States was only out of the worldwide global climate pact for 107 days. It was part of Trump’s withdrawal from global allegiances in general and his oft-stated but false view that global warming was a laughably mistaken take by the world’s scientists.

More broadly, Trump reversed Obama-era initiatives to rein in oil, gas, and coal emissions and opened new federal lands and waters to exploration and drilling. Biden is working to overturn those measures and additionally has pledged a $2 trillion remake of U.S. power grids, transportation systems, and other infrastructure to sharply cut fossil fuel pollution.

While Friday’s return is heavily symbolic, world leaders say they expect America to prove its seriousness to the cause. They are particularly eager for the United States to announce its new national 2030 target for cutting fossil fuel emissions, which scientists agree are altering the Earth’s climate and worsening the extremes of drought, hurricanes, flooding, and other natural disasters.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that the official American reentry “is itself very important,” as is Biden’s announcement that the U.S. will return to providing climate aid to poorer nations, as promised in 2009.

“It’s not about how many days. It’s the political symbolism that the largest economy refuses to see the opportunity of addressing climate change.” said Christiana Figueres, the former United Nations climate chief. She was one of the leading forces in hammering out the mostly voluntary 2015 agreement in which nations set their own goals to reduce greenhouse gases.

One fear was that other nations would follow America in abandoning the climate fight, but none did, Figueres said. She said the real issue was four years of climate inaction by the Trump administration. American cities, states and businesses still worked to reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide but without the participation of the federal government.

“We’ve lost too much time,” Figueres said.

Inger Andersen, the environment program director at the United Nations, said America has to prove its leadership to the rest of the world, but she said she has no doubt it will when it submits its required emissions-cutting targets.

“We hope they will translate into a very meaningful reduction of emissions, and they will be an example for other countries to follow,” Guterres said.

The Biden administration is working now on a target that balances meaningful cuts in emissions with political and financial realities. Settling on a U.S. emissions goal by April, when Biden plans to host world leaders for an Earth Day summit, would help the administration prod other countries for ambitious emissions cuts as well. That spring meeting should see countries start “to put the down payments on the table,” John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, said Friday.

Republican leaders already are fighting it.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate energy panel, has criticized Biden for rejoining the Paris accord, tweeting: “Returning to the Paris climate agreement will raise Americans’ energy costs and won’t solve climate change. The Biden administration will set unworkable targets for the United States while China and Russia can continue with business as usual.”

University of Maryland environment professor Nate Hultman, who worked on the Obama administration’s official Paris goal, said he expects a 2030 target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions between 40% and 50% from the 2005 baseline levels.

A longtime international goal, included in the Paris accord with an even more stringent target, is to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since that time.

The United States’ return to the Paris accord and an ambitious target for emissions cuts would make limiting warming “to well below 2 degrees — not just to 2 degrees but below 2 degrees — a lot more likely,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, energy and climate director for the Breakthrough Institute.

Knickmeyer reported from Oklahoma City. Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

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On Twitter, follow Ellen Knickmeyer at @ellenknickmeyer and Seth Borenstein at @borenbears.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/us-return-paris-climate-world-leaders-ee8eb8b6744394ad41e33f94843b6586

The post Back in Paris pact, US faces tougher climate steps ahead first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Everyone is bracing for the most stringent lock-downs yet.  Compliance was gained when they told us it was a two-week exercise to “flatten the curve.”  When the “curve was flattened,” they told us just a bit longer to make sure the virus wouldn’t finish off everyone.

We are a polite, and obedient people when it comes to law enforcement, or for that matter recommendations from governors or other officials assuming there’s some logic.  Everybody did that, believing the “experts” knew what they were doing.  But here we are, nearly a year into the worst time of many people’s lives, and several “authorities” are posing in all their hauteur, saying it’s time to get inside and stay there.  They’re making it simple, as L. A. Mayor Garcetti just got through saying, “Now is the time to hunker down.”  There are some teeth, as everyone’s seen.  Break the rules, and they might just turn off your electricity.  They might have you arrested, and they might board up your business, or have 25 Sheriffs blockade it as happened night before last in Staten Island, NY.  It’s pretty hard to believe these things are happening in the United States of America.  You can’t find anything that gives local yokels the indefinite legal authority to put everyone under house arrest, with punishment for non-compliance.  Whoever heard of it?  Outside of communist countries, that is.

“Hunkering down” has already destroyed hundreds of thousands of small businesses all across America.  Cynics say businesses are only going under because the government won’t give them the money to get through all the stringent orders being imposed.  And that would make it the fault of one Donald J. Trump.  How dare he withhold borrowed money from those suffering from the horrid virus?  Meanwhile, the big corporations are rolling in the dough.  Nothing benefits Amazon-like lock-downs.

Then we find out that most of the “government money” already doled out seems to have ended up in the hands of various foundations and charities, some of which donate back to the politicians who put us all on the hook for it in the first place.  We’ll probably never know what happened to the tens and hundreds of millions that have been doled out.  But they’re screaming that it must be done again, and pronto or it’ll be the fault of you-know-who that multitudes go bust.

The thing that has most people somewhere between anger and despair is the state of the electoral quagmire.  It was all too predictable.  It looks as though there may be proof of massive fraud after all, but then we’re told nothing unusual happened.  “You just wouldn’t understand how these things work.” they tell us.  “Our election experts and lawyers have already reviewed the whole thing and they can assure you nothing unusual, let alone fraudulent occurred.  It was all “normal.”  Please move along.

Besides, the mainstream “news media” turned the page two weeks ago.  They declared the winner, and ever since nearly all discussion is about the upcoming “administration” and how it will quickly erase the Trump presidency from history.  They’ll make it like it never even happened.

They can’t wait to get us back on the road Obama had us on.  The new “administration” will rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, let all the illegals stay forever and bring in as many more as possible because after all, “They are the source of our strength.”  Maybe not OUR strength, but certainly the strength of would-be autocrats intent on “fairness” and redistribution.  That’s the news, and they’re all so excited about the incoming staff!  They’re all so progressive!

Please never mind that “Build Back Better” is a chapter heading in the UN’s wonderful global agenda.  Don’t go and read it, unless you’ve grown accustomed to having everything explained in kindergarten logic.  You’re just a child, and these people are the elite experts who must explain everything simply and concisely while they eliminate World hunger, stamp out poverty, and eliminate carbon.  Won’t it be great when the world is all one?  I don’t know what their plans are for the raids and killings that plague African villages.  Maybe they’ll wipe out hate and tribalism too.  Yeah, that’s it.

But the best part of the UN’s plan is that they’re going to “govern the climate.”  You heard right.  These arrogant little twerps are going to “govern” everything!  Won’t that be wonderful?  And you can forget all that stuff about Making America Great Again.  That was nothing but racism and xenophobia.  In the post-Trump era, the media will breathe such a sigh of relief.  Finally they can herd us into globalism, and if you think you’ll resist, try traveling, buying anything, going anywhere.  No, they’ve got an answer for everything.  Just be patient, and they’ll explain everything!

If you think for one moment that the media’s “incoming administration” is not going to try to eradicate everything we hold dear, open your eyes.  This is not about political parties, it’s about FREEDOM.  God invented it, and He allowed us to live it.  Obviously it was taken for granted.  It was abused.  And it just might be lost forever.  But then again, it looks as though the election may have been defrauded!  Don’t tell the mainstream fruit loops.  Wouldn’t want to interrupt their celebration.  Yet.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 4 December 2020 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Donald Trump said that under the last administration, America’s energy industry was under relentless and unceasing attack.(AFP)

US President Donald Trump has alleged that India, China, and Russia do not take care of their air, while America does, noting that he withdrew from the “one-sided, energy-destroying” Paris climate accord which would have made it a “non-competitive nation”.

Trump, in his address on energy and the Permian Basin in Midland, Texas on Wednesday, said that by imposing these punishing restrictions — and beyond restrictions – “the Washington radical-left, crazy Democrats” would also send countless American jobs, factories, industries to China and to other foreign polluting states.

“They want us to take care of our air, but China doesn’t take care of its air. In all fairness, India doesn’t take care of its air. Russia doesn’t take care of its air. But we do. Not on my watch, it’s not going to happen — I can tell you that. Because as long as I’m President, we will always put America first. It’s very simple,” he said.

“For years and years, we put other countries first, and we now put America first. As we have seen in cities and towns across our nation, it’s not just Texas oil that the radical Democrats want to destroy; they want to destroy our country,” he said.

Such radical Democrats, he alleged, do not love the country in any way, shape, or form.

“There’s no respect for the American way of life. There is no way of life ever in history that’s been like the great American way of life. There is no respect, but there is by you, and there is by 95 percent of our people. Our people love our country, and our people love our anthem and they love our flag,” he said.

Trump said that under the last administration, America’s energy industry was under relentless and unceasing attack.

“But the day I took the oath of office, we ended the war on American energy and we stopped the far-left assault on American energy workers,” he said.

Observing that he withdrew from the one-sided, energy-destroying Paris climate accord, he said this was a disaster and cost the US billions of dollars.

The US in November last year formally notified the UN of its withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, a global agreement in which President Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama had played a key role.

Although Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the historic pact on June 1, 2017, the process began last year with the formal notification and the US will be out of the pact on November 4, 2020.

“It (Paris climate accord) would have made us a non-competitive nation. We canceled the Obama administration’s job-crushing clean power plan,” he said as he listed some of the steps being taken by his administration.

“For the first time in nearly 70 years, we have become a net energy exporter. And the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas on the face of the Earth. To ensure we maintain this dominant position long into the future, my administration is announcing today that export authorizations for American liquefied natural gas can now be extended through the year 2050,” Trump added.

India is the fourth highest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, accounting for 7 percent of global emissions in 2017, according to the projection by the Global Carbon Project published in December 2018.

The top four emitters in 2017, which covered 58 percent of global emissions, were China (27 percent), the US (15 percent), the European Union (10 percent), and India (7 percent), it said.

In January 2019, the Indian government launched the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) to combat the rising level of air pollution.

The NCAP, a five-year action plan, focuses on 102 polluted Indian cities and aims to reduce PM2.5 levels by 20-30 percent over the next five years. It also aims to build a pan-India air quality monitoring network and improve citizen awareness.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/donald-trump-says-india-china-and-russia-don-t-take-care-of-their-air/story-TGR4WdMIOUUPvOl1kscR4N.html

The post Donald Trump says India, China and Russia don’t take care of their air first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

That’s CNN’s suggestion.

CNN’s political analyst, John Avlon, made the stunning claim Thursday during a segment called “Reality Check.”

Is Trump “complicit in this storm?” asked Alisyn Camerota in the segment introduction.

“His policies have been tearing down our defenses to climate change, which is often a blame for extreme weather,” Avlon answered. “On the same day Trump was discussing Florence, his EPA proposed rolling back restrictions on emissions of methane. That’s just the latest environmental policy targeted by the Trump Administration.”

Avlon rattled off a series of Obama-era environmental regulations the Trump Administration is rolling back — including pulling out of the Paris climate accord — and then boldly predicted a death toll in the thousands.

“It is so bad according to two Harvard scientists, it could lead to 80,000 unnecessary deaths every decade,” Avlon said. “Warmer water means more intense storms. When President Trump called Hurricane Florence tremendously wet, he was on to something.”

“This isn’t rocket science, it is climate science,” he concluded. “As long as we continue to aggressively ignore it, the cost in lives and dollars will escalate. That’s your reality check.”

Source: http://www.climatedepot.com/2018/09/13/cnn-blames-trump-for-hurricanes-his-climate-policies-will-lead-to-80000-unnecessary-deaths/

The post CNN Blames Trump for Hurricanes; His Climate Policies Will Lead to ‘80,000 Unnecessary Deaths’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Emmanuel Macron urges Germany to step up to ‘its responsibilities’ at historic moment for EU reform first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The European Union trades with America “very unfairly”, President Donald Trump said in an interview aired Sunday, warning that his many problems with Brussels “may morph into something very big”.

“The European Union has treated the United States very unfairly when it came to trade,” Trump told Britain’s ITV channel in the interview conducted Thursday.

“I’ve had a lot of problems with (the) European Union, and it may morph into something very big from that standpoint — from a trade standpoint.”

Trump delivered the warning during a wide-ranging interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he took his “America First” agenda to the global business elite.

In a speech Friday he told the forum that his mantra “does not mean America alone” and hinted that the US could rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal he withdrew from a year ago.

But earlier this month the Trump Administration imposed steep tariffs on imported washing machines and solar panels, and his interview comments may cause alarm in European capitals over future trade relations with the US.

Last year it vowed to impose nearly 300 percent punitive tariffs on airplanes manufactured by Canada’s Bombardier.

A bipartisan US trade panel blocked that decision on Friday but the dispute, which has inflamed relations with Ottawa — and to a lesser degree Britain, where Bombardier has a large workforce — could be a harbinger for the EU.

“We cannot get our product in. It’s very, very tough. And yet, they send their product to us — no taxes, very little taxes. It’s very unfair,” Trump added.

“They’re not the only one, by the way, and I could name many countries and places that do (the same).

“But the European Union has been very, very unfair to the United States. And I think it will turn out to be very much to their detriment.”

‘I certainly apologise’

In other remarks aired Sunday, Trump appeared to slight British Prime Minister Theresa May’s handling of fraught Brexit negotiations, declaring that he would have “negotiated it differently”.

“I would have had a different attitude,” he said of the talks, which have followed Britain’s June 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU, and will continue through to its planned departure in March 2019.

“I think I would have said that the European Union is not cracked up to what it’s supposed to be. And I would have taken a tougher stand in getting out,” Trump added.

But May will welcome his prediction — reinforced by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in Davos — that the US could swiftly strike a post-Brexit trade deal with London.

“We are going to make a deal with (the) UK that’ll be great,” he said, noting constraints imposed by the Brexit process.

“When that restriction is up we’re going to be your great trading partner.”

The US president also apologised for the first time for retweeting a British far-right group’s videos apparently showing Islamist violence.

“If you’re telling me they’re horrible racist people, I would certainly apologise if you’d like me to do that,” he said.

Trump confirmed he will visit Britain later this year, where he believes he is “very popular”.

The president said he does not care about those opposed to his British visit, who include London mayor Sadiq Khan and the opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, amid predictions of large protests.

“I think a lot of people in your country like what I stand for, they respect what I stand for,” he told his interviewer Piers Morgan.

Asked if he had received an invitation to the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle later this year, Trump replied “not that I know of”.

“I really want them to be happy. They look like a lovely couple,” he said, when pressed on disparaging comments Markle previously made about the president.

Not a feminist

During the interview — billed as the first of his presidency with a non-US international broadcaster — Trump was asked if he identifies as a feminist.

“No, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist,” he replied.

“I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone.”

Trump also signalled he would be willing to recommit the US to the Paris climate accord, but only if the treaty undergoes major change.

“The Paris accord, for us, would have been a disaster,” he said in the interview Sunday.

“If they made a good deal… there’s always a chance we’d get back.”

(AFP)

Source: http://www.france24.com/en/20180129-trump-blasts-very-unfair-eu-over-trade

The post Trump blasts ‘very unfair’ EU over trade first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

“In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record,” the president tweeted Thursday night. “Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against.”

Indeed, both high and low temperature records have been tied or broken in recent days, according to the Weather Channel. Augusta, Maine (3 degrees Fahrenheit), Syracuse, New York (8 degrees), Boston (12 degrees), New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport (19 degrees), and Baltimore (24 degrees) all saw their temperature high records tied or broken Thursday.

But a comprehensive U.S. report released back in November concluded the evidence for global warming is the strongest it’s ever been, with scientists saying that it’s “extremely likely” — meaning with 95 to 100% certainty — that global warming is man-made, primarily from the rampant burning of coal, oil and natural gas that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Trump appeared to use the recent weather forecast to justify the country’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, a landmark global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One hundred ninety-six countries have signed on to the agreement, meaning the U.S. would be the only sovereign nation in the world to not be onboard with the pact should the U.S. leave in 2020 as promised.

As indicated in his Thursday tweet, Trump feels that the Paris agreement places an unfair financial burden on the U.S.

“The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States’ wealth to other countries,” Trump said in June when he announced the United States’ intention to withdraw from the accord. “It’s to give their country an economic edge over the United States. That’s not going to happen while I’m president. I’m sorry.”

Source: http://fortune.com/2017/12/29/donald-trump-cold-weather-forecast/

The post President Trump Mocks Global Warming Fears Because of Frigid Forecasts Across the U.S. first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.