While all the chaotic fireworks were exploding from Trump’s Oval Office — from Canada as the 51st State to Gaza as his waterfront Club Med — one little cracker caused barely a flicker of interest in a bedazzled media.
Trump’s decision to abandon the Paris Agreement on climate change is an act that will go down as America’s day of infamy. He not only committed a crime against humanity, but against all sentient life on planet Earth.
The agreement’s legally binding goal is “to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C” ’ It notes that greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 at the latest and decline 43% by 2030.
Trump is the leader of the nation that generates the second largest share of these gases. He is a multiple offender. His first withdrawal was as the 45th president. It was immediately restored by his successor Joe Biden. This time he’s doubled down with a battle cry to the oil and gas industries: “Drill, baby, drill!”
Aside from nuclear war, it’s hard to imagine a more destructive act from any human being. Yet the world’s leaders have remained silent. The Australian Government and Opposition excuses themselves from commenting on anything said or done by Trump, unless he calls Albo “a very fine man” in a “constructive and warm discussion” on tariffs. Our Pacific “family” must surely be outraged at Trump and the selective Australian silence.
Instead, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles shovels $800 million into the official pockets of former Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth in his new gig as defence secretary. It’s billed as a down payment for submarines that might (or might not) be delivered in 20 years or so, depending on the whim of the then president. Hegseth could barely contain himself. He uttered the usual platitudes, but his face said, “Mother was right – there’s one born every day”.
The American public who elected Trump — and who have tasted the consequences in the Los Angeles fires and ever-stronger tornadoes — seem immune to today’s reality, much less to an almost unimaginable future. And while we’re in an imaginative mood, think of the worldwide reaction if China’s Xi Jinping committed a similar climate change felony: Uproar!
Of course, that’s not going to happen. While Washington is tearing itself apart, Beijing is reaping the whirlwind. The White House fireworks and DeepSeek’s coincidental public emergence symbolised the tale of two very different cities.
Trump is clearly itching for a fight, if only via trade. He can practise his art of the deal moves with Greenland, Gaza and the Panama Canal. But a symbolic visit to Taipei, for example, is a very different matter. That’s when our “very fine man” and his government will begin to regret the day they were born.
I suspect it’s beyond even Trump to do something quite so outlandish, but like most other columnists I’ve underestimated the lengths he will go to impose himself on the world we know and love. Though I’ve met two very different American presidents — Nixon and Johnson — I couldn’t envisage a time when any commander-in-chief would encourage a mob to storm the Capitol and threaten the lives of its elected Congress, including his own vice-president. I would laugh out loud at the suggestion that any incumbent of the Oval Office would condemn the planet to the terminal ravages of climate change.
So I could be wrong again.
I desperately hope I am.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.
Robert Macklin is the author of 25 books of Australian history, most recently the best-selling Castaway (Hachette) now in his sixth printing. His sixth book, The Donald Thomson Story, a biography of the great Australian anthropologist and advocate for Aboriginal advancement, is now in bookstores.