Not Much Traction in Bay State for Trump Climate Move
Mike Clifford-Commonwealth News Service
BOSTON – Promising to save trillions of dollars in lost domestic product and millions of industrial jobs, President Donald Trump announced Thursday he is pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord.
Katherine Anderson, communications coordinator for the group, ‘350 Mass’ says the speech is over, but the time to act on climate change is not.
She takes issue with the savings Trump is touting, and her group is urging Gov. Charlie Baker to stick by the Paris Climate Accord and the state’s pledge to cut carbon emissions by 25 percent by the year 2020.
“So, now that Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris agreement, states, cities and towns need to rise to the occasion and chart their own path, and that includes Massachusetts,” she says.
Representatives of the coal industry and such conservative groups as the Heritage Foundation are applauding the President’s decision. But, his move drew a sharp rebuke from Boston Mayor Marty Walsh – who advised Trump on Twitter to check his geography, and that Boston won’t follow his lead.
Prior to the Rose Garden announcement, groups in Boston held an action protesting drastic cuts in the President’s proposed budget, including cuts that weaken efforts to curb climate change.
Among those joining the action was representative to the National People’s Budget Campaign for the American Friends Service Committee, Paul Shannon.
“He has basically declared war on the climate by insisting in his infrastructure plans to build more pipelines everywhere in the country,” he says.
“He has made it clear he is going to put more oil, more coal, more gas out into the market.” Shannon also serves as the AFSC representative to the National People’s Budget Campaign, a plan he says would devote a whole lot less funding to the Pentagon than is called for in the Trump budget.
“To me, the main category is war – $54 billion just next year, which he takes from Meals On Wheels and a bunch of other programs like that, and moves into the Pentagon budget,” he adds.
“Just that $54 billion increase is about the size of the entire Russian military budget.”
The People’s Budget is a project of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Shannon says it lays out a plan to create millions of jobs, invest in infrastructure and balance the federal budget faster than the GOP budget plans.