Environment

China Reminds World That Reagan Started Climate Change Negotiations

Written by SK Ashby

The Chinese government has provided a helpful history lesson for despot-elect Donald Trump and his supporters.

Leaders from nearly 200 nations gathered in Morocco for climate change negotiations last week where the vice foreign minister of China reminded the world that if you're going to accuse someone of creating a climate change hoax, you should start with Saint Ronald Reagan.

China couldn’t have invented global warming as a hoax to harm U.S. competitiveness because it was Donald Trump’s Republican predecessors who started climate negotiations in the 1980s, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said. [...]

“If you look at the history of climate change negotiations, actually it was initiated by the IPCC with the support of the Republicans during the Reagan and senior Bush administration during the late 1980s,” Liu told reporters during an hour-long briefing.

Zhenmin added that Saint Reagan initiated negotiations before China even knew about the negotiations.

I'm old enough to remember when Republicans said we shouldn't bother doing anything about climate change because, as the world's biggest polluter, China will never come on board, but in the very near future the world may rely on China to lead the fight against climate change if despot-elect Donald Trump withdraws from the Paris climate agreement.

My maniacal laughter is a coping mechanism.