David E. Sanger Quotes
We had a great chance in the mid-2000s to reach an accord with the Chinese on both energy and environmental issues. That deal would have essentially been that the U.S. could provide the equipment and expertise, and the Chinese would help close the trade gap. It was a huge opportunity that we failed to exploit.
Sanger, David E. The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power. Harmony Books, 2009.
Those environmentalists who take this view do not give credence to other alternatives. For example, the same argument of environmental decision-making could logically justify one superpower nation taking over the government of all others on the planet for environmental matters. Another possibility is that the existing mechanisms and the UN are sufficient if the major powers reach agreement. Another is that science and technology will provide solutions.
The Paris Agreement was an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020. The language of the agreement was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and adopted by consensus on December 12, 2015. Never before in the history of the world had that many nations agreed on anything. Yet the United States Donald Trump administration, and a significant proportion of right wing and Tea Party Repoblicans actually believed that the threat of climate change was a hoax and at best the erroneous conclusion of "left wing" scientists. Within the wcientific community in the United State, there were very few major scientific issues for which there was almost unanamous consensus. Climat change and the role of humans in accelerating it was one of those.
David E. Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. A 1982 graduate of Harvard College, Sanger has been writing for the Times for 30 years covering foreign policy, globalization, nuclear proliferation, and the presidency.
