Everything Changed, Nothing Changed -- June 4, 2017

The other day I posted that Trump announcing that the US will run, not walk, away from the Paris climate accord sent a huge message to countries around the world.

In another post I asked what countries will now consider it safe to follow suit, that is, walk away from the scam. It will be interesting to see which countries continue to send money to South Korea to fund the "Green Fund" as part of the "deal."

[The second link will likely open a PDF on your desktop. As far as I know, no embedded viruses, but fair warning. It is interesting to note that China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, have not seen fit to fund the "Green Fund" whereas President Obama, with no Congressional approval or oversight, had no problem sending $500 million to this fund three days before he left office, according to The Washington Post.]

For now, his announcement has put things on hold. Reuters is reporting that the EU and China failed to agree on a formal climate statement at recent summit. The parties are said to have failed to agree on something as un-challenging as a climate statement (remember: this is all voluntary and parties are allowed to set their own targets -- in other words it's all talk anyway). Generally summits are held when both parties have already agreed on something. Something must have happened for the parties to walk away from pre-summit agreements.

My hunch is that the summit was too far along to be canceled but with the Thursday afternoon, June 1, 2017, announcement, China opted to step back, parse Trump's speech, and wait before committing to anything new.

As Hillary would say: Trump hit the "reset" button.