The thing is, he's technically right. It would be bad for business for a finite period. However, not to act would be bad for all life on this planet, perhaps forever. So I guess it comes down to what is more important.
It's the businesses, isn't it? Who cares about life continuing? Money is now.
We tend to hate a country and a leader who commit genocide, or a holocaust against a religion or ideology. How will we feel about a leader and a country whose choice it is to threaten everything and everyone, their own people included? Every human, every animal, every species, every single thing, perhaps all life in the universe if it turns we are uniquely alive.
You would think there would be some impulse to protect what is special and beautiful. Not just the creatures with scientific names we don't care about, but our family, our children. It appears there is not. There is only the will to continue to choke them, poison them, and limit their future so that some people can have an exceptional last few years of their lives that have already been spent greedily thieving away from the cumulative happiness of others.
@GlassDog: I don't get what you're saying about business. Solar alone employs more people than all the fossil fuel industries combined. We could have LED the world and SOLD our products. Now China and India will.
@GlassDog: I might disagree with your first statement about bring bad for business ... There's a huge opportunity there for new business .. the problem is coal miners want to be coal miners and not change
@ozgirl512: And the ironic thing is that those jobs really won't come back because the worldwide market for coal is becoming obsolete. Clinton had a HUGE spending package that was earmarked for coal country for education, job training and infrastructure. Now those idiots won't only remain unemployed but will lose what they relied on for the health care. All because some silver spooned con man, who wouldn't have walked across the street to spit on them prior to running, lied and they believed. Disgusting.
@Ynotisay: It's always going to be cheaper for businesses to be allowed to ravage the planet than to clean up after themselves. However, you're right. The rest of the world is not going to go anywhere near ecologically dirty American products now. If Trump was clever, he'd have seen climate change as an opportunity and not just financial but an opportunity to show America as a progenitor of positive change. Instead, he's taken you out of the club. The EU and China are now taking up the fight and we're looking at cooperative sustainability across Eurasia.
If climate change accelerates, who do you think is going to be blamed? Depending on how things go, America may be tarnished forever. It's an incredible risk just to make some bucks today.
@StepDad2: To most of the world, coal was history in the 1950s. However, to a politician lobbied by someone whose only business is coal, I guess not. They both benefit.
@ozgirl512: I'd argue that the environmental movement would stop (or make more expensive) the mining of coal, and so that is what would be bad for the coal business.
@ozgirl512: Oh, I agree, but "bad" industries can still be profitable. War is very, very profitable, for instance. I don't agree with going to war just to stimulate an economy but you'd be surprised how often that's the real motivation for war.
