Why would Trump say “let’s focus on digging out things and burning them rather than getting free stuff from space and the weather"?
For me it’s at a set of traffic lights when I’m on a bicycle. The lights go green. I huff and puff and grimace as I lean on the pedal to get going. There’s probably some courier-type who’s been balancing, as if touching the ground would cause the curse to come true and he’ll be 900 years old, just like Oisín. He gets away quicker but even he is eclipsed by the roar of an engine, as even the puniest car pulls comfortably away from us. You just can’t compete with the pent up energy in those molecules. All I have is porridge and evolution. Engines have at their disposal, millions of years of compression as dinosaur bones and old fern are crushed into 1.30-something per litre or less if you go for the carwash.
Donald Trump doesn’t need a bicycle to affirm his love for fossil fuels. To mangle a phrase, a Trump needs a bicycle like a fish needs a bicycle. But pulling out of the Paris Agreement just feels wrong, even if you didn’t give a hoot about the environment.
