California Governor Jerry Brown downplayed President Trump’s influence on the climate change debate in the U.S. at a Vatican symposium Saturday, saying that his impact is “very small.”
Governor Brown delivered the keynote address at a climate change symposium organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, where fellow U.S. Democrats—Kevin de León, president pro tempore of the state Senate, and Congressman Scott Peters—were also invited to speak.
Regarding climate change, “the Trump factor is very small, very small indeed,” Brown told his enthusiastic audience, which burst into a spontaneous round of applause. “That’s nothing to cheer about because if it was only Trump that was a problem, we’d have it solved. But that’s not our only problem.”
But that’s not the only problem,” he said, adding that the real problem “is us.”
“It’s our whole way of life. It’s our comfort. It’s the greed. It’s the indulgence. It’s the pattern. It is the inertia,” Brown explained.
The California governor sought to reassure his hearers that Mr. Trump is out of touch with rank and file Americans, who believe in global warming and would embrace the measures stipulated by the Paris climate accord, which seems to be losing supporters elsewhere.
“In many respects, if you try to measure what has been President Trump’s positive contribution, I would have to say his attempted withdrawal from Paris actually has put the matter much more in the forefront of the American people,” he said. “It is now more salient because of the contrast between what he is saying what the laws of America provide, what other states are doing.”
Shortly before his trip abroad, Governor Brown granted an interview to BBC radio, in which he threatened to sue the Trump administration over climate change while vowing to “stabilize the ship of state.”
“The president is working to delegitimize the very notion of climate change,” Brown told Jim Naughtie of the BBC in a program that aired Oct. 24, while the position of California is to go “against the policies of President Trump.”
“I hope the rest of the world does their part in providing a forceful opposition,” he said.
“Trump has declared war on a majority of the American people under the guise of supporting his minority base and it’s very dangerous,” Brown said. “It’s very disruptive for America, and I’m going to do everything I can to stabilize the ship of state.”
The governor went on to say that the president uses the issue of global warming to “work” his constituency. “I think he sees this as a galvanizing rhetoric for his base,” he said.
In his address at the Vatican Saturday, Mr. Brown advocated mobilizing religious leaders to move the hearts of believers to engage in climate advocacy.
“Until the religious sensibility is engaged — until religious leaders from every part of the globe and from every denomination are engaged — we’re not going to be able to move aside the huge rock of indifference, complacency, and inertia,” he said.
The governor also recommended getting beyond a data-based debate to connect with people on an emotional level.
“The connection of health to climate change is central because climate change is an abstraction,” he said. “Very few people can grasp or really be moved by it. But the pollution effects, people get that.”
“Going forward, we’re going to have to find the pathway to awaken the world, to get done what needs to be done,” he said. “We’re not going to get there with just science and technology. There’s no technical fix adequate to the challenge we face.”
Saturday marked the second time the Vatican has offered a platform to the pro-abortion governor from which to preach his views on global warming.
At a similar Vatican event in 2015, Brown attacked climate-change skeptics, calling them well-financed “troglodytes” who are determined to “bamboozle” their fellow citizens.
Climate change is “the biggest threat of our time” after nuclear annihilation, Brown announced.
“If we don’t annihilate ourselves with nuclear bombs then it’s climate change,” he said.
Read more at Breitbart
Moonbeam is a blabbering stupid head scatterbrain just like with all liberal demac-RATS too stupid to be allowed doing anything but shooting off his piehole
How convenient to include religion when talking about the political thrust of climate change. In all other issues, the government likes to spout off how religion has no place in politics. Governor Moonbeam is such a hypocrite, as is the liberal population of California. If they cared so much, California would not have so much pollution.
Science, politics, and religion… What could possibly go wrong?
Moonbeam uses oh so scary global warming as a deflection ploy .
The air heads that have run California over the past 40 years have run it into the ground and they know it so they would rather create a new source of revenue while pretending to save the planet .
It is like a little boy denying again and again that he wasn’t the one to put a frog in Suzy’s lunch box. After awhile it is obvious that he is the one who did it.
There have been so many denials that Trump has had a negative impact on the climate change movement, it is obvious that he has. One COP leader pointed out the wave of public support that followed Trump announcing we are leaving the treaty. However, even after public statements of support, many nations have been canceling their programs to meet the treaty’s requirements, as an article on this web site pointed out. Many treaty supporters have pointed out the states that have said they are still going to follow the treaty. Yet, you can bet the 26 states that sued to stop the clean power plan are not going to take action to support the Paris Treaty.
As so many denials show, Trump has damaged the climate change movement.
From the article, “It’s our whole way of life. It’s our comfort. It’s the greed. It’s the indulgence.”
As off the wall Governor Brown is, he hit a central point here. The climate change movement wants to destroy our way of life and comfort. If riding in my warm car for a 45 minute commute rather than shivering waiting for a bus for a 90 minute commute is greed, I’ll take the greed. If being in a warm house rather than shivering in a cold one is greed, then I’ll take it. The same is true of quality of my diet, owning pets, and what I pay for energy.
Most people are with you on that one David Lewis . I doubt Moonbeam has ever missed a meal .
President Trump has done more than damaged the climate fear industry he is in the process of make it possible for scientists to
practice the scientific method without the climate gestapo trying to bully them . Liberal light weights like Canada’s Prime Minister Photo -Op and Ontario’s energy horror show are selling the country down the river for much ado about nothing . Ok other than the $Billions in tax payer debt they leave as there legacy .
Moonbeam is a con-man just like Al Bore selling their Snake Oil to the gullible still foolish enough to beleive what they say and to listen to Al Bores idiotic poem