President Trump’s decision to strike our membership with the Paris Climate Agreement was just one step of the United States’ withdrawal from our world-wide leadership position. Given the distaste of the current occupants of the White House and majorities in Congress for, well, the study of reality, I suppose it’s unsurprising. It tastes like someone lost their nerve.
But the world isn’t stopping in the face of American intransigence, and the latest sign that the world began accelerating away the moment we stepped off the podium comes from France, as reported by The Guardian:
France will end sales of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040 as part of an ambitious plan to meet its targets under the Paris climate accord, Emmanuel Macron’s government has announced. …
Nicolas Hulot, the country’s new ecology minister, said: “We are announcing an end to the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040.” Hulot added that the move was a “veritable revolution”.
Hulot insisted that the decision was a question of public health policy and “a way to fight against air pollution”. The veteran environmental campaigner was among several political newcomers to whom Macron gave top jobs in his government.
Pascal Canfin, the head of WWF France and a former Green politician who served in François Hollande’s government, said the new policy platform to counter climate change went further than previous administrations in France. “It places France among the leaders of climate action in the world,” he told France Inter radio.
As later noted, Norway is also moving in this direction, and similar noises are erupting across Europe and India. Seeing that car makers such as Ford and General Motors are global in nature, this will impact them, and hopefully they are preparing for it even now. But it’s important to note this is happening without American leadership. While it’s tempting to blame this on the GOP incompetence and provinciality in Washington, there is a second factor to consider:
The European nations have recovered from World War II and the Cold War.
For those unfamiliar with history[1], World War II was physically and spiritually devastating for nearly all the European countries; one might argue that Sweden and Switzerland, avowed neutrals, escaped damage, but even they had their losses, intangible as they might have been. The rebuilding was more than physical, for in the cases of the Axis powers, entire governing structures had to be redesigned and implemented. The Allies, so sorely pressed, needed to query themselves as to their errors in the run-up to the War, and how to avoid repeating them. These are blows to efficiency, certainty, and national self-confidence.
Then the Cold War came on the heels of World War II, casting a foreboding backdrop on the events of the world as China’s warlord system collapsed and reformed into the image of the deadly Cultural Revolution. The mutual menace of the Cold War and North Korea’s invasion of South Korea forced two countries, the Soviet Union and the United States, into the leadership positions of their sides, the former due to its aggressive nature, the latter because of its size, immense resources, and superior strength relative to its allies outside of the Communist world. The United States’ strength, due to its geographical isolation during World War II, made it the natural leader through the conflicts which have occurred since, as well as the responses to catastrophes, both real and hypothetical, during that time.
But now, I think, the United States has entered a period of exhaustion. The free enterprise system, whatever you may think of it, has increasingly brought change in its role as the purveyor of creative destruction, to borrow a libertarian term. That change is at odds with the temperament of much of America, those who have invested themselves in the old ways of doing things – in the old power structures, be they religious hierarchies, fossil fuel industries, or moral systems based on old assumptions. Even the stock exchanges of today do not resemble, in implementation, those of 20 years ago.
And in a country often described as one of the most religious, this is a problem, because religion does not teach change; religion teaches stasis. It speaks of eternal morality systems, not of improving and evolving morality systems. If the reader doubts it, consider the reaction to every attempt to improve our public morality since the beginning of the Republic. When Northern public opinion turned against slavery, did the slave-owners politely dispense with their slaves?
No. The forces of conservatism rallied and instigated a Civil War, calling upon Biblical references to justify their position that slavery is good.
Therefore, for those who have been taught and absorbed the ideas of the eternal and changeless, the changes brought by the Internet, science, and by those obsessed with selective justice, reek of something else: immorality is as good a word as I can imagine at the moment. But depending on the issue, a multitude of negatively connoted words apply.
Scientists, seeing change in their data collections and worrying about its negative effects for current civilization, are disbelieved by those who have been taught that what we have done for 100 years has been good.
Gay marriage, unimaginable in the 1980s, is now permitted. In some states, a majority of the citizens even voted to allow it prior to the Supreme Court decision. Yet, from pulpit and podium, homosexuality has long been a target of those embodying “right” thinking.
Some industries depart, others arise. Where are the good old days, of working in the steel mills or descending into the coal mines? Even a black President came, who somehow survived constant rhetorical assault to resolve a host of problems.
And then arose, as we all know, the man who promises to bring back all the good times. Coal miners: we’ll use coal again. We’ll build a wall to keep out those bad immigrants who steal our jobs. We’ll reduce taxes and increase military spending because, by God, our military just sucks. Old, good jobs sound so great, and when they’re impossible, at least a finger can be pointed at something tangible. And military spending? That plays so well to those who remember the Cold War, the constant armament building, and how that brought money flooding into communities, and honor as well – contributing to the nation’s defense is always honorable, no?
As an agnostic, I find the roots of religion repugnant, but I do recognize that it brings a morality to the citizen which does not require the hard work of building a secular philosophy that compels what we call moral behavior. At its best, religion brings the simplicity of the Golden Rule to society; at its worst, it espouses a ridiculous theology resulting in the condemnation of millions of people for a multitude of dubious sins, thus hindering that same society. But the underlying teaching of stasis, of an eternal set of rules leading to Godly approval, is a dismaying facet of the institution of religion, for two reasons.
First, it leads to a brittle citizenry, a citizenry trained to expect stasis in a world of change, a training so strong that, when faced with contrary evidence, a howl of disbelief and scorn is raised, rather than the sober, mature reflection necessary for good decision making.
Second, when that brittleness snaps, the citizens tend to toss away all the rules, even as they continue their devotions. We saw this in the vote for our current President, a man of dubious public morality, who lied and lied and lied. And the Christian nation approved him anyway because he promised a return to stasis, when times were good and they could bask in their Godly approval.
That generation, I fear, is too old to change. We may see another twenty years of GOP fumbling in governance, in combination with Democratic incompetence, before enough of its current base dies off to force it to change – or perish. Younger generations, for the most part not heavily invested in a holistic mythos venerated by this older generation, may not replenish the ranks of the GOP to any great extent, although many currently isolated in areas where conservative ideology and news organizations hold sway may be lured into the fold.
And the question will be whether or not we inadvertently cause the destruction of the current civilization, or if the rest of the world can contain and ameliorate the damage while the exhausted generation dies off. In the latter case, I am thinking of car-makers forced to abandon fossil-fueled cars because the world outside of the United States has ceased demanding them, and as a response, manufacturers begin to phase them out even within the United States. But that is speculative and narrow; those same manufacturers, recognizing the climate change catastrophe approaching, may switch of their own accord. Some commerce actually employs strategic vision and recognizes the necessity of change.
The aphorism still holds true: change or die.
But, in the meantime, we should expect to see European and Chinese leadership taking over for the increasingly timid Americans. The simple denials of reality, the pursuit of false fantasies, are simply not acceptable in world leadership circles. So leadership returns across the ocean, most vividly to France and Germany, and China. And the United States regenerates, and relearns the lessons of fantasies.
1As I become more decrepit with age, the temptation to shout Well, get educated about history! greatly increases.
