Former President Barack Obama took advantage of a Paris address Saturday to take a veiled dig at his successor, President Donald Trump, telling his audience that “we have a temporary absence of American leadership” on climate change.
Obama was speaking before a group of some 800 French CEOS, celebrities and public officials at an invitation-only conference in France called the Napoleons, where he lamented the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, an agreement he had signed in 2015.
Asked about his three greatest fears, the former president listed climate change in the first place, followed by nuclear proliferation and a possible global pandemic like the Spanish flu magnified by the development of air transport.
Mr. Obama didn’t limit his criticisms of Mr. Trump—while never mentioning his name—to the area of global warming but also worked in oblique references to the President’s use of social media. Obama reportedly drew laughter from the audience when he said he had more followers than others “who use it more often.”
Mr. Obama praised the efforts of individual U.S. states and cities aimed at reducing carbon emissions and said that America is still on track to meet climate goals set in past agreements.
During his first international trip as president last May, Mr. Trump underscored a different set of priorities.
In a meeting with the G7 nations in Taormina, Sicily, the President shifted discussions away from climate change to what he declared to be the most critical issue facing the world, namely Islamic terrorism.
Just days before, the President European addressed 55 world leaders from Arab and other Muslim-majority nations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In that speech, Trump called for unity in pursuing “the one goal that transcends every other consideration. That goal is to meet history’s great test—to conquer extremism and vanquish the forces of terrorism.”
Back in the U.S., President Trump gave a speech in the Rose Garden after deciding to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. The Climate Accord, Trump stated, “is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.”
The agreement would have left American workers and taxpayers to “absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production,” he said.
“Thus, as of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country,” he said.
Read more at Breitbart
Rakooi is a long winded pinhead who makes enough Hot Air to raise one of those colorful balloons into space
Going along with the climate change movement and supporting the Paris Treaty is not leadership. It is being a sheep in a herd following the others. President Trump has shown leadership by going towards a sound economic energy policy. Some nations have a lot of internal decent on this issue and it is only a matter of time before they follow the US lead.
The sentence I hear most from well-meaning, conservative friends
since President Trump’s election is this:
“We suffered 8 years under Barack Obama.”
Fair enough. Let’s take a look.
The day Obama took office, the Dow closed at 7,949 points. Eight years later,
the Dow had almost tripled, closing at 21,414.
General Motors and Chrysler were on the brink of bankruptcy,
with Ford not far behind, and their failure, along with their supply chains,
would have meant the loss of millions of jobs.
Obama pushed through a controversial,
*** $8o billion bailout to save the car industry.
The U.S. car industry survived, started making money again,
and the entire $80 billion was paid back, with interest.
While we remain vulnerable to lone-wolf attacks,
no foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed a
mass attack here since 9/11.
Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.
((killed more Terrorist Leaders than ALL Presidents before or since ! ))
He drew down the number of troops from 180,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan
to just 15,000, and increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
He launched a program called Opening Doors which, since 2010,
has led to a 47 percent decline in the number of homeless veterans.
He set a record 73 straight months of private-sector job growth.
Due to Obama’s regulatory policies, greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 12%,
production of renewable energy more than doubled, and
our dependence on foreign oil was cut in half.
He signed The Lilly Ledbetter Act, making it easier for women to sue employers
for unequal pay.
His Omnibus Public Lands Management Act designated more than
2 million acres as wilderness, creating thousands of miles of trails
and protecting over 1,000 miles of rivers.
He reduced the federal deficit from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2009 to 3.2 percent in 2016.
For all the inadequacies of the Affordable Care Act,
we seem to have forgotten that, before the ACA,
you could be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition (millions were)
and kids could not stay on their parents’ policies up to age 26.
Obama approved a $14.5 billion system to rebuild the levees in New Orleans.
All this,
even as our own Mitch McConnell famously asserted that his singular mission
would be to block anything President Obama tried to do.
While Obama failed on his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay,
that prison’s population decreased from 242 to around 50.
He expanded funding for embryonic stem cell research,
supporting groundbreaking advancement in areas like spinal injury treatment
and cancer.
Credit card companies can no longer charge hidden fees or raise interest rates
without advance notice.
Most years,
Obama threw a 4th of July party for military families.
He held babies,
played games with children,
served barbecue, and led the singing of “Happy Birthday” to his daughter Malia,
who was born on July 4.
Welfare spending is down:
for every 100 poor families,
just 24 receive cash assistance,
compared with 64 in 1996.
Obama comforted families and communities following more than a dozen mass shootings.
After Sandy Hook, he said,
“The majority of those who died today were children,
beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.”
Yet,
he never took away anyone’s guns.
He sang Amazing Grace, spontaneously, at the altar.
He was the first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms
without personal or political scandal.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
President Obama was not perfect,
as no man and no president is,
and
you can certainly disagree with his political ideologies. But to say we suffered?
If that’s the argument,
if this is how we suffered for 8 years under Barack Obama,
I have one wish: may we be so fortunate as to suffer 8 more exactly like it.
AUH2O for ever…as opposed to the GROPER in Chief.
You really do believe everything the media tells you don’t you takeout. No scandals, do you remember bengazi sir, how about the kerfuffle regarding the irs targeting conservative non-profit organisations during an election year or the more recent trump wire tapping. Try thinking for yourself once in a while.
As long as Obama is oinking to the french why dont he just live over there pernematly becuase we don’t want him anymore