Inside Out | Donald Trump is the gift that keeps giving China a centre stage role in the new world order
While Trump may not have caused great harm to the environment, he inflicted more harm on America’s global standing and brought to the centre stage China, a country less motivated by anxieties to save the earth than grabbing the chance to dominate in renewable energy.
“Across ancient and modern eras, orders built by great powers have come and gone. But they have normally ended in murder, not suicide,” Princeton’s Professor G. John Ikenberry noted with irony last week, on hearing news of Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord.
With rich and tragic irony, Trump spoke as China’s Li Keqiang met European ministers to reaffirm their commitment to the 2015 Paris agreement – a new European friend for a new world order.
Leaders in Europe seemed transfixed, perplexed and appalled to watch the US deserting a peaceful and cooperative world order that the US itself had forged after the Second World War, and were forced to begin contemplating a new world order with the US at the margins – or worse still, entirely absent from the field of play.
After disagreements with Trump on trade, Russia, Nato and finally climate, Angela Merkel cryptically captured Europe’s mood: “The times when we could completely rely on others are, to an extent, over.”
Less noticed, but with tragic symbolism for all who are concerned about the pace of global warming, Trump’s withdrawal came as 1,900 square miles of the Larsen C ice sheet in the western Antarctic began to separate to become the biggest iceberg ever to be born – that is three times the area of Singapore or 20 times that of Hong Kong Island.
If, as scientists expect, this destabilises the entire Larsen C ice sheet, the result could in due course lift global water levels by six metres.