As the Gilets Jaunes protests in France catch fire, French President Emmanuel Macron is heading for his green Waterloo. And really, humiliation, defeat and — with luck — exile somewhere really remote just couldn’t happen to a more deserving candidate.
One reason this dime store Napoleon has it coming is outlined in a characteristically incisive piece by Dominic Lawson in the Mail. It’s headlined: “Why It’s Hard Not to Gloat at the Travails of the Strutting French President Who Called Brexiteers Liars.”
Lawson points out that of all the European leaders, no one has gone further out of his way to try to shaft Britain’s Brexit prospects than the pint-sized Mummy’s Boy Macron.
Eighteen climate scientists, 13 of them from the U.S., are emigrating to France to take advantage of President Macron’s $70 million publicity stunt to embarrass President Trump scheme to save climate science from evil, right-wing deniers.
As I reported earlier this year, Macron announced the scheme on his Facebook page in February – even before he knew he’d won the French presidential election – perhaps as some kind of anti-Trump trolling exercise:
“This is a message for American researchers, entrepreneurs, engineers working on climate change…I do know how your new president has decided to jeopardize your budget, your initiatives as he is extremely skeptical about climate change. I have no doubt about climate change… Please come to France. You are welcome. It’s your nation. We like innovation. We want innovative people. We want people working on climate change, energy, renewables, and new technologies. France is your nation.”
And now France’s hard-pressed taxpayers are going to have to pay for his idle boast.
“The selected projects are of very high standards and deal with issues that are particularly important,” the jury said in a statement, noting its members had received a total of 1,822 applications, of which 1,123 came from the US. A second round of laureates will be announced “during the course of the spring of 2018”, it said.
Naturally, those selected have seized the opportunity to wail about the decline of climate research opportunities in the Trump administration.
Donald Trump was the lucky winner of a global elite gathering held in Paris today to mark the second anniversary of the useless, pointless and very expensive COP21 U.N. climate summit: he didn’t get an invitation.
British Prime Minister Theresa May was invited – and accepted. (And tweeted this extremely embarrassing thing to remind the world yet again why so many Conservatives expect her government to be overthrown by a bunch of revolutionary socialists at the next election, because hey what difference would it make?)
So too – allegedly – were 50 other “global leaders”, including Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.
But there was no official delegation from the U.S. because that was the real point of the event: so that French President Emmanuel Macron and the rest of the Davos elite could be seen publicly to be punishing President Trump by conspicuously not inviting him.
Instead, the U.S. was represented by the Three Stooges of Eco Loon Bloviation: California Gov. Jerry Brown; former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg; and the almost inevitable Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made a fool of himself by mincing around on a silly green bicycle.
The U.S. will be removed from Angela Merkel’s Weihnachtskarte list.
The U.S. may become the victim of further weaponized handshakes and other typically Gallic “your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries” insults from prepubescent Mummy’s little tough boy President Macron of France.
The U.S. presidential administration may become subject to further awkward rifts between those who want a “seat at the table” in Paris – Tillerson; Jared Kushner; Ivanka; Gary Cohn; Rick Perry – and those who want out.
The U.S. may add to “global warming” by 0.3 degrees C, causing the world to boil and melt or, if not that, then at least provoking much bitterness and resentment among all the countries that haven’t yet quit Paris even though they’d all secretly like to.
Quite how Trump will respond to these threats is still anyone’s guess. On the one hand, he has reportedly told various allies that he intends to pull out. On the other, he is known for changing his mind at the last minute.
What we do know is that the climate gravy train is trundling on regardless. And that as far as the U.S. climate negotiators are concerned, the current president might still just as well be Barack Obama.
