Spreading the Cult of Carbon

Tomgram: Michael Klare, | Tom Dispatch:

When you think about it, isn’t it strange that Donald Trump doesn’t represent the historical norm, that Americans have never before elected a P.T. Barnum president (though Barnum did become the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut)? After all, as I wrote of Trump during the 2016 election campaign, “What could be more American than his two major roles: salesman (or pitchman) and con artist?” Americans have always loved a con man -- something Hillary Clinton and her advisers somehow never quite grasped.

Trump was always, at heart, both the pitchman of, and a con artist for, American abundance, or rather for a particularly American version of conspicuous consumption.  Hence, the reported $7 million in gold leaf in the Louis XIV-style ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago private club, the gold-plated bathroom fixtures on his plane, the gold-plated helicopter he owned, the $100 bottles of Trump 24K Super Premium Vodka with a 24-karat gold “T” on the label, and of course his name skylined across the planet in giant golden letters. Hence also his ability to convince others of his success, even when his casinos cratered -- he still made millions off them, leaving his investors holding the bag -- his magazine floundered, his steaks went to the dogs, his airlines barely got off the ground, and Trump University’s triumph lay in the number of lawsuits it produced (and the Mexican-American judge he defamed). Consider this not failure, but Donald Trump in his prime. 

So it’s strange that, in the thunderstorm of media coverage of President Trump -- never has any president sucked the air out of the media room this way -- his greatest pitch and what may be the greatest selling scam in history has gotten so little attention in these last six months. I’m talking about his scheme, as reported by TomDispatch regular Michael Klare today, to open the gold-plated spigot on American fossil fuels and sell the country’s oil and natural gas abroad in far greater quantities than at present.

In the past, the pain Trump caused had its limits (though tell that to those casino investors or the “students” of Trump University).  Even Trumpcare, which -- were it ever to come to be, leaving the health of millions in tatters -- would only wound some, not all.  On the other hand, convincing the world that this is the moment to burn yet more American fossil fuels and so release yet more carbon emissions into an already overheating atmosphere, if carried off “successfully,” might prove the greatest scam in history. The pain from it would be beyond measure, since it would damage the very environment that has proven, for all these millennia, so welcoming to humanity.  It would, in short, represent an all-too-conspicuous consumption -- of pain. Let Klare explain. Tom

America’s Carbon-Pusher in Chief 
Trump’s Fossil-Fueled Foreign Policy 
By Michael T. Klare

Who says President Trump doesn’t have a coherent foreign policy?  Pundits and critics across the political spectrum have chided him for failing to articulate and implement a clear international agenda. Look closely at his overseas endeavors, though, and one all-too-consistent pattern emerges: Donald Trump will do whatever it takes to prolong the reign of fossil fuels by sabotaging efforts to curb carbon emissions and promoting the global consumption of U.S. oil, coal, and natural gas.  Whenever he meets with foreign leaders, it seems, his first impulse is to ply them with American fossil fuels.

His decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which obliged this country to reduce its coal consumption and take other steps to curb its carbon emissions, was widely covered by the American mainstream news media.  On the other hand, the president’s efforts to promote greater fossil fuel consumption abroad -- just as significant in terms of potential harm to the planet -- have received remarkably little attention.

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