Patriotism: noun meaning national loyalty, devoted love, support and defense of one’s country.
President Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement (United Nations 2013) is most definitely an act of patriotism. It avoids surrendering the national sovereignty of the United States to a faceless, formless glob of coming “rules, modalities and procedures” (Article 6, Paragraph 7) in pursuit of specific goals determined by a “global stocktake” (Article 14, Section 1). These specific goals are to further sustainable development, eradicate poverty, safeguard food security, end hunger, transition the global workforce from crappy jobs to “decent work and quality jobs”.
The Paris Agreement is also anti-American because it is sexist and Islamophobic. It promotes “gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity.” So much for our Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. And I guess the authors don’t want Islamic countries to join the Agreement, since Islam is anything but a gender equal, female empowerment culture. You’d think the authors of this would bend over backwards to get Middle Eastern countries to sign on, since they sit on such a large mass of fossil fuels.
But wait, there’s more. The Paris Agreement is also homophobic and anti-LGBT community. The whole purpose of this Agreement is to control the environment to protect “sustainable lifestyles.” This must be code-speak for traditional marriage because the only way to sustain life on this planet is for male humans and female humans to have sex with each other enough times for sperm to fertilize an egg. Two guys can’t make a baby, nor can two women. As a matter of pure logic, gays and lesbians need not apply for the critical job of procreation.
And it’s not enough just to have babies. They must live long enough to produce the next generation of babies. And so on. But this is still not enough. They must grow up and have sex to produce more babies. If simply not enough babies make it to adulthood and procreate, human life becomes unsustainable. Have we forgotten that re-population is required to sustain life too? Well, the Paris Agreement at least got this part right, even if it’s un-American as Justice Kennedy (Justice, SCOTUS), wrote in Obergefell.
The globinous substance of this Agreement is in effect a technocracy carried out by a Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice and a Subsidiary Body for Implementation (Article 18, Section 1). These people with all the knowledge about science and technology necessary to control society are to make sure that participants’ adaptive actions are “gender-responsive”, “based on and guided by the best available science and, as appropriate, traditional knowledge, knowledge of indigenous peoples and local knowledge systems.” (Article 7, Paragraph 5). I think this means the best available science trumps everything else listed after it. But the text says nothing about how to resolve conflicts between traditional knowledge and knowledge of indigenous peoples. Looking back in time, how would these technocrats have resolved differences between European settlers of America, and the Native Americans? Even in today’s time, just start with the conflict over peyote.
As an environmental lawyer I hate to see sovereign nations submit themselves to international treaties on environmental issues. I think you would be surprised to learn about all the international treaties we already have that relate to the environment. Being good stewards of Mother Earth is critical, and my sarcasm in this post is not meant to denigrate that ultimate truth. But the Paris Agreement set up a framework that would have led the United States to surrendering its sovereignty in pursuit of unattainable goals based on hotly contested theoretical explanations of the natural world. Better to love, support and defend the USA by letting this opportunity pass.
