Words of French President Emmanuel Macron – the anti-Trump – to the American president pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord. He said he would welcome American climate scientists.
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” the great American patriot Thomas Paine wrote. We could use the strength of Paine and people like him at this moment.
Yesterday’s terrorist attack in London – which left seven dead and dozens wounded, including 21 critically – was not merely a momentary victory for the terrorists. It was a win for the strongmen of the world like President Donald J. Trump, whose response to them is more hatred and more irrational violence. Notice I wrote, “irrational violence.” I have no objection to taking the terrorists out. To them I say, “We damn you. We denounce you. We defy you.”
But to the victims and the downtrodden I say, “We are your friends, your brothers and sisters. We embrace your loss. We will never desert you.”
Unfortunately, Trumpet’s response is to say we should get rid of gun control. Yeah, sure. Because nothing says “effective action” quite like arming people who are not professionals and who might unintentionally take out an innocent.
Trump’s us-against-them mentality – borne of a narcissistic insecurity that sees enemies everywhere and in everything – is taking the U.S. out of the game at the moment when the world needs us most. The Climate Accord exit – Clexit? – the grandiose, straining for the Churchillian “I was elected the president of Pittsburgh, not Paris” – that was all stupid. For one thing, Pittsburgh – which went for Hillary Clinton in a big way, 80 percent of the vote – is a green city. Steel left Pittsburgh in the 1970s, and the city fathers and mothers saw the light.
That’s what has to happen to the self-centered rust-belters. They and we need a road-to-Damascus moment. Coal is not coming back. Factories are not coming back. (Even Brexit-bound Britain is seeking to eliminate coal by 2020.)
Time doesn’t flow backward. We have to adapt more to the digital age or we will surely die in the technological age. You can’t sell goods merely to your family, friends and neighbors. That’s what kids do when they sell ads in the school journal or Scout cookies. That’s lazy salesmanship. We have to continue to reach out to the world and touch others.
I was heartened to hear former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged up to $15 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies to cover the funds the United Nations will lose with the U.S. pulling out of the Paris Accord.
“Americans are not walking away from the Paris Climate Agreement. Just the opposite. We are forging ahead,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “Mayors, governors and business leaders from both political parties are signing onto a statement of support that we will submit to the UN and, together, we will reach the emission reduction goals that the U.S. made in Paris in 2015.”
In the same vein, France’s new President Emmanuel Macron – who’s showing strongmen like Trumpet and his lizard-like man crush, Vladimir “Rootin’ Tootin’” Putin, the difference between toughness and real strength – is stepping into the leadership vacuum as well challenging us all to “make the planet great again.”
In an unprecedented address delivered in English that demonstrated an eloquent statesmanship – to say nothing of a bilingualism – sorely lacking in the Oval Office, Macron said, “Tonight, I wish to tell the United States, France believes in you. The world believes in you. I know that you are a great nation. I know your history — our common history.”
He continued: “To all scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, responsible citizens who were disappointed by the decision of the president of the United States, I want to say that they will find in France a second homeland,” he continued. “I call on them: Come and work here with us, to work together on concrete solutions for our climate, our environment. I can assure you, France will not give up the fight.”
That’s the spirit. We must resist the haters whether they be the terrorists, with the disproportionate rage at some disappointment that I call “the literature of rejection,” or world leaders who are their flip side. If they won’t take care of the world’s problems, we will.
And we will do it by marrying courage to compassion.