Mitch Perry
The New Yorker magazine has a story this week on what a President Donald J. Trump would do if elected in November.
Writer Evan Osnos reports that Trump’s advisers are weighing several options for the “First Day Project” – where he would spend hours on inauguration day next January signing papers that “erases the Obama Presidency,” in the words of Stephen Moore. “We want to identify maybe twenty-five executive orders that Trump could sign literally the first day in office.”
Among the executive orders being contemplated include renouncing the Paris Agreement on greenhouse-gas emissions.
To which Ban-Ki Moon says, “no, no, no.”
The U.N. Secretary General is expected to announce today that he has secured enough commitments from world leaders to ensure that the 2015 Paris climate accord will enter into legal force this year, which, according to the NY Times, binds the next American president, whoever it is.
The Times’ Coral Davenport reports that, “complex and controversial international accords usually take several years to enter into legal force. But the haste on the Paris accord was driven at least in part by the looming American election. Donald J. Trump the Republican candidate, has vowed to pull the United States out of the accord if he is elected. If the deal comes into legal force before the presidential inauguration, it will take four years under the accord’s rules for the United States to legally withdraw. That would keep the country bound to the measure through the first term of the next administration.”
Not everyone is on board, however, which is why this is no done deal yet. But Moon, in his last year as Secretary General, is said to be hellbent on getting the formal approval of 55 countries representing 55 percent of global emissions — the threshold needed to put the accord into force. And with every country represented this week at the U.N. General Assembly in Manhattan, Moon is going to be working it all week long.
To date, of 27 countries have ratified the Paris Agreement so far, accounting for 39 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming well below 2 degree Celsius and as close to 1.5 degree Celsius as possible, to increase economic and social ability to adapt to extreme climate, and to direct the scale and speed of global financial flows to match the required path to very low-emission, climate-resilient development, according to the U.N.’s website.
In other news..
An angry Rick Scott is tired of getting rejected by the feds when it comes to requesting federal funds for natural emergencies. The Governor is requesting money following the deleterious affects that Hurricane Hermine had on the Sunshine State, but also mentioned every other major thing that has happened in Florida over the past year in making his ask this time around.
Progressive groups around the nation are trying to derail Marco Rubio’s reelection chances this fall. There was those nearly 60,000 mailers sent out by the Florida chapter of the AFL-CIO, and now a another advocacy group plans to putting the pressure on Rubio for his stances on Social Security.
Andrew Warren, the Democratic challenger for the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s race, unveiled a plan to reduce juvenile arrests and put more emphasis on civil citations on Tuesday.
The Jeff Vinik-Bill Gates project to redevelop the Channelside part of downtown Tampa has now swelled to 53 acres and $3 billion.
