By Rivers
November 9th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
There will be many postmortems on the 2024 US presidential election. And time will tell if Mr. Trump is as bad as so many have predicted. Those predictions are not without substance, given his behaviour following the 2020 election and his rhetoric during the campaign.
American citizens lining up to vote.
It would be easy to blame the media for his win, including social media, as an opinion writer did in a recent New York Times article. And some will also try to blame Kamala Harris or Joe Biden for this or that – but the outcome was decisive and we all will have to live with it. To be clear, the responsibility for that outcome, given that Trump won everything including the popular vote, lies entirely at the feet of the American voting public.
But I don’t think it’ll be the end of the world, though there will be significant challenges for us here in Canada. Trump is doubling down on his denial of global warming for ideological reasons, promising to slash the development of renewable energy and electric vehicles, notwithstanding the presence of Elon Musk in his inner Cabinet.
The reality is that America is still the second largest GHG producing nation on the planet and has contributed to something like a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions that are currently warming the planet. America, more than any other nation on earth, has caused global warming and climate change – it has a responsibility to lead us all to a lower carbon footprint.
Climate change has resulted in forest fires that have been close to impossible to control.
Rainfall that exceeded past experience is expected to be a new reality for the continent.
We know that it will be virtually impossible to reverse climate change, but its destructive development could be retarded somewhat, or accelerated, by what we do today. Mr. Trump’s ‘drill baby drill’ says it all when it comes to the question of what he plans to do. Weather events over the next four years will only get worse if the science community continues to be right. But so many of us act like lobsters sitting on the stove in that big water pot we call mother earth, continuing to ignore the danger, even as we slowly turn a Trump orange hue.
And that denialism south of the border will place the Liberals and other green parties into a tough place here in Canada. Right wing-ism has caught on here as well, and that will likely mean an end to carbon pricing and to proposed regulations curbing emissions in the oil and gas industry, even if the Tory climate denial folks don’t assume government, which the polls way they almost certainly will.
Keeping control of a critical market will be a challenge.
Trade irritation will almost certainly become more intense between our two nations even if Trump is prevented by his own party from enacting his 10% global import tariff policy. That poor BQ private members bill enshrining dairy supply management in law, having been rejected by Canada’s Senate, is likely to die a fatal death on the order paper. And that will leave the door open for the US dairy producers to crawl further into our dairy counters.
NATO, as we know it, may not disappear but it probably should. It is clear that Europe and Canada, have not taken this partnership seriously or they would have responded to Russian genocide as they did to Iraqi and Serbian aggression back when. Europe needs to grow up and take responsibility for its own defence rather than relying on the US military with its checkered past and its distracted and spineless leadership.
Trump, in his last term, at least supplied Ukraine with some anti-tank weapons, unlike Obama who just gave Putin the green light. And Biden, much like Trudeau, just wrung his hands from the sidelines, watching as Ukrainians were brutalized, bombed and slaughtered by the thousands. Biden held back providing the weapons needed until it was almost too late in every case, making their hoped for counter offensive impossible. He also prevented his NATO allies from doing more – all the while mumbling something about avoiding escalation.
The immigration issue in the US which, probably more than anything else, won the election for Trump is also an issue here. Trudeau has recently reassessed his ‘wild west’ post COVID immigration policy, but it’s probably too late to convince those wannabe home owners that he’s finally got the message. Politicians used to think that holding back immigration was an ethnic vote loser. But the US election demonstrated the exact opposite, as Trump scored big even with ethnic Latin voters.
There will be other issues in the course of Trump’s four year reign of power. And there is the concern that he will extend his term. He’ll be 82 at the end if he survives the term. But he’s beaten the odds before – including assassination attempts and COVID. In the meantime Trump holds all the cards – the Supreme Court and Congress will be expected to rubber stamp his every wish. And he now has immunity for anything he does while in office.
That perhaps is the natural evolution of democracies, a sort of capitalist model by comparison, where the free market naturally evolves into a monopoly with one or two companies dominating in the end. One only has to look at Hungary where democracy has slowly eroded into a kind of autocracy, where media freedom has been constrained and where divergent views are censored and suppressed.
For Americans, this may well be beginning of the end of checks and balances for governing bodies and perhaps the end of separation of church and state. For an America founded on the premise of equality and freedom, that would be the sum of the biggest fears of the framers of US constitution.
Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa. Tweet @rayzrivers
Excellent analysis. Cousin John is well and looking forward to Christmas
Not Bad. One of the comments in the Gazette recently referenced Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” This is what I was thinking on that sunny Wednesday morning as I made myself a cup of coffee, I had no idea as to the outcome of the election, I just hoped it was definitive, one way or the other, on opening my news feed, the result seemed solid enough, I did not share in either the elation or sorrow as did each of the candidate’s supporters. I read the MSM’s recriminations with the usual eye roll and then went about my day. No muss no fuss.
Philip – Thanks for trying to clarify. Look, I accept your numbers and they are consistent with what I am using – but what I said was that the US has “contributed to something like a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions that are currently warming the planet”. It is the accumulated GHG that is causing the greenhouse effect since those emissions stay in the atmosphere for between 300 and 1000 years and the US accounts for a quarter of the anthropogenic GHG emissions released over that period. China surpassed the US as the major source of GHG released only in 2006.
With respect, your confusion lies in your failure to read the column thoroughly or to appreciate the difference between a stock and a flow. And for the record I’m not sure how this makes me a hack – defined as someone who places partisan loyalty over ethics.
No Ray, what you said was that “the US is still the second largest GHG producing nation on the planet”. You would have to be a mental contortionist to interpret this to mean the cumulative past, and not just the present. By your own admission of agreement with Philip’s data, your claim is patently false. Admit it Ray, Philip was right, not confused. You, not so much.
I agree with Joe on the depth and detail of your article, Ray. Four more years of U.S. carbon in the air? We’ll never learn until it is too late to learn. Four years of undoing democracy and the Constitution in the U.S.? Then maybe President for life? New name Dear Leader with banners on most buildings?
For once I’m glad I’m getting old and won’t live through that many more years of my decline and the world’s. But I fear for my children and grandchildren and the world they are inheriting, led by increasingly more selfish and uncaring leaders.
Good read on the situation Ray. There is a reason why Wisconsin with over 7000 dairy farms backed Trump and rejected Walz who is now looking for work.
Another blinding climps of the obvious from this Liberal hack.
Editor’s note: Why does Graham feel he can call Rivers a Liberal hack. Rivers has been a participant in civic and political event for close to four decades. He has served the community – read the bio that is placed at the bottom of each column.
We wonder where Graham has made his contribution. Name calling is what children do in the school yard – up your game a little Graham – and learn to spell please.
Why is Rivers a Liberal hack? Let’s examine the REAL data on US emissions. Here’s what Rivers is feeding you:
“The reality is that America is still the second largest GHG producing nation on the planet and has contributed to something like a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions that are currently warming the planet. America, more than any other nation on earth, has caused global warming and climate change – it has a responsibility to lead us all to a lower carbon footprint.”
But here’s the REALITY that EDGAR (the European Commission that Reports on Global emissions) has to say about GHG emissions. From 2000 to 2023, the USA despite having the world’s largest economy, has CUT its emissions by some 1240 mt (and done so without a punitive carbon tax!). Compare that with Canada which during the same time frame has actually seen its GHG emissions RISE by 37.3 mt and even during the past 9 years of our climate heroes, Trudeau and Guilbeault inflicting financial hardship on Canadians with a punitive carbon tax, has only cut those emissions by 8.23 mt (I should add those emission actually rose in 2023 by 2.43 mt). Meanwhile, the USA which is the second largest emitter only contributed 11.25% of global emissions (not a quarter, Ray!). And China with the second largest economy behind the USA contributes MORE THAN TWICE the US emissions and contributes 30.1% of global emissions.
Ray is either very bad an analyzing the ACTUAL data or his obviously flawed paragraph on American climate policy is politically motivated.