Trump is concerned about people, for example coal miners, who work in an industry that has been hammered by politicians, bureaucrats and environmentalists. And the coal mining industry is key, around the world, for things needing energy. America has moved, and will continue to move, into the “green economy”, whether in or out of the Paris accord. The farther from politics, the better the technology, economics and rational thinking.



Stiglitz assumes that Paris’s fear of CO2 is a good thing, a basis for levying a good tax. The “far higher” carbon cost levy that Stiglitz wishes to impose would “still [be] manageable”. One would like to know what “manageable” is for a country, like America, that struggles under a huge unsustainable burden of debt, for the effects of the high tax would be in effect permanent. He cites Sweden as a model. Sweden’s major source of power is nuclear, and has no coal-fired power stations. Its high carbon tax is placed on four thermal non-nuclear (natural gas and fuel oil) stations providing 10-15% of Sweden’s total megawatts. Hydro produces about the same, and there is a spattering of the same ugly wind farms that pimple many countries, including America.



Independence is America’s strength, and America has long been a leader and long been derided from within (a la the American Stiglitz) and without. Nothing new here. As Stiglitz notes, American states take their own decisions in many areas, one emblem of American independence and its strength. And this independence is crucial to learn whether global warming/climate change is normal or not, and whether the panic that is being urgently pressed onto the world is justified panic or unjustified panic. If global warming/climate change is indeed shown to be a threat, America and other countries will be able to adapt. After all, a great strength of humans, we must remember, is that we can adapt, if politics and global panic don’t get in the way.

