The Perils of an “America First” Climate Policy

Trump kept pulling the U.S. out of treaties and international collaboration.  He wanted an egocentric “America First” policy that actually interfered with solving global problems.

Now President Biden is doing somewhat better on some issues, but he appointed a great many war-hawks to powerful positions, and he keeps taking his advice to pursue militarism and nationalism instead of collaborating well as one nation among nearly 200 on Planet Earth.  A number of knowledgeable persons have said that Biden’s foreign policy is pretty much the same as Trump’s

President Biden has promised action to protect the climate, but in order to fulfill his climate promises, Biden will have to abandon the U.S. tradition of hawkish nationalism in favor of global cooperation.

 

Below I provide a link to an article whose third paragraph says:

America First” still rules the day, with the Biden administration positioning climate action as an opportunity for U.S. companies to dominate export markets and hoard green intellectual property. As Biden told a joint session of Congress in April, ​“We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century.”

Two later paragraphs say:

But who wins when an existential threat is cast as a new Cold War? The planet doesn’t much care whether emissions rise over Detroit or Shenzhen, or who gets rich mitigating climate change. Decarbonizing as fast as possible requires priorities beyond hawkish nationalism and corporate profit.

In keeping with decades of Democratic Party climate politics, Biden has yet to acknowledge the massive climate debt the U.S. owes the world. Nor has he done much to directly curb Big Oil, which continues to put itself at the center of the global climate policy-making debate.

 

The article linked below points out just one of the serious problems in Trump’s BI-PARTISAN replacement of NAFTA.  The new law further empowers giant transnational corporations, including fossil fuel companies.  The article does a good job of LINKING THE CLIMATE CRISIS with our call for a PEACEFUL AND JUST FOREIGN POLICY:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/trade-climate-justice-green-new-deal-environment?link_id=5&can_id=1d662460c0abb8939c5044c82927552b&source=email-dont-blame-wildfire-broken-treaty-goldmine-undocumented-dairy-workers-rural-housing-crisis-2&email_referrer=email_1196270&email_subject=rooting-out-racism-at-usda-green-new-deal-in-the-south-bird-workers-unite-death-of-a-lumber-town

 

 

About GlenAnderson 1498 Articles
Since the late 1960s Glen Anderson has devoted his life to working as a volunteer for peace, nonviolence, social justice, and progressive political issues. He has worked through many existing organizations and started several. Over the years he has worked especially for such wide-ranging goals as making peace with Vietnam, eliminating nuclear weapons, converting from a military economy to a peacetime economy, abolishing the death penalty, promoting nonviolence at all levels throughout society, and helping people organize and strategize for grassroots movements to solve many kinds of problems. He writes, speaks, and conducts training workshops on a wide variety of topics. Since 1987 he has produced and hosted a one-hour cable TV interview program on many kinds of issues. Since 2017 he has blogged at https://parallaxperspectives.org He lives in Lacey near Olympia WA. You can reach him at (360) 491-9093 glen@parallaxperspectives.org