Comey Coming Up

While we await the inevitable full disclosure of Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice; disguised collaboration with Russian officials to trade election hacking and financial support for removal of economic sanctions on Russia; and await the inevitable, convincing evidence of the hidden collaboration by many Trump administration members to achieve these ends;

and though the world properly condemns Trump for his immoral withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords;

no one currently speaks an inconvenient truth:

The president’s withdrawal makes absolutely no difference to the fate of the Earth, a fate that has been sealed for years. Greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide and methane, continue to be spewed into the atmosphere at increasing rates with no significant reduction in sight. The inevitable intolerable heat, ocean acidification, sea level rise and increasingly intense weather patterns, and their cumulative effects, will destroy or largely eliminate many plant and animal species including our own. Wishing, hoping, or trying to implement fragmentary volunteer “solutions” will not forestall or change this outcome.

Politically and economically speaking, if the near future is to be characterized by the leadership of European nations rather than the U.S., I will be quite content. Germany’s Angela Merkel is an astute and far-sighted leader; France’s Emmanuel Macron, attractive, firm, and spirited, may well become Europe’s John Kennedy; and should Jeremy Corbyn, representing policies similar to those promoted by our Bernie Sanders, pull off an upset to be elected the U.K.’s prime minister rather than Teresa May, I will be overjoyed.