By Ryan Grenoble
Sometimes the path back to relevance starts with acknowledging your mistakes ― even if those mistakes were intentional and committed entirely by your predecessor. President Joe Biden is in Glasgow, Scotland, for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference this week, where he’s looking to reposition the United States as a dependable leader in the fight against climate change. His first order of business? Apologize for the last guy, who went out of his way to ignore science and make climate change worse. “I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact the United States, the last administration, pulled out of the Paris accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball a little bit,” Biden told world leaders on Monday. “Behind the eight ball” is a severe understatement. As president, Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a landmark deal the U.S. took a lead in brokering. The deal seeks to cut planet-heating emissions and includes virtually every nation as a signatory. Even the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, a massive global oil company, thought leaving the deal was a dumb move.Back home, Trump repeatedly targeted the Clean Air Act, sought to roll back decades of Clean Water Act protections, and actively tried to bury climate science reports that didn’t fit his narrative. He also lied constantly about all of that, often claiming to be doing the opposite.Science was never Trump’s strong suit. He had virtually no science advisers on staff, dismissed “Global Waming [sic]” as a “Chinese hoax” because it was cold in the Midwest once, infamously doctored a hurricane forecast with a Sharpie in an attempt to save face, and, in the face of a deadly global pandemic, repeatedly doled out harmful and counterproductive advice even as he privately knew better, leading to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.The president told world leaders, “I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize" for one of Donald Trump's more memorable anti-science acts.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-trump-paris-climate-agreement_n_61801497e4b010d93320f4ff
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