On Saturday, President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping formally signed onto the Paris climate agreement at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China. To commend the presidents for signing onto the agreement, progressive groups MoveOn.Org and NextGen Climate took the opportunity to applaud the president – and attack the potential future one, Donald Trump.
The ad underscores the difficulty – and the time – that it took for a realistic climate change plan to come to fruition. “For twenty-five years the nations of the world have been trying to hammer out an agreement,” a newscaster says. “It’s really like a NASA moonshot moment.”
The ad then juxtaposes Hillary Clinton’s climate change positions and Donald Trump’s by playing clips of the two back and forth. Clinton calls climate change a “consequential crisis to everybody in the world,” while Trump insists that “a lot of it is a hoax.”
The ad ends with the message, “Our Planet Can’t Afford Trump. Vote November 8th.”
Clinton has aligned herself with the president, and has showered the Paris agreement in praise – as this ad shows from her DNC speech. On the other hand, Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are furious that President Obama didn’t submit the agreement to the Senate.
And that was a gamble for President Obama, because without Senate ratification, the agreement is not a formal treaty – and that means a President Trump could easily stick to his pledge to “cancel” it.
Obama: ‘The Moment We Finally Decided to Save Our Planet’
The ad opens with a clip from President Obama’s speech at the G20 summit, where he stood in front of U.S., Chinese and United Nations flags and said, “Someday we may see this as the moment we finally decided to save our planet.” China and the U.S. are the world’s two largest economies – and the biggest emitters of carbon pollution. There are a total of 26 countries committed to the pact, accounting for 39% of total global emissions.The ad underscores the difficulty – and the time – that it took for a realistic climate change plan to come to fruition. “For twenty-five years the nations of the world have been trying to hammer out an agreement,” a newscaster says. “It’s really like a NASA moonshot moment.”
The ad then juxtaposes Hillary Clinton’s climate change positions and Donald Trump’s by playing clips of the two back and forth. Clinton calls climate change a “consequential crisis to everybody in the world,” while Trump insists that “a lot of it is a hoax.”
The ad ends with the message, “Our Planet Can’t Afford Trump. Vote November 8th.”
The G20 Summit, The Paris Climate Agreement and The 2016 Presidential Election
Although the G20 Summit and the Paris climate agreement have not caused as much of a political uproar in Congress as, say a Supreme Court nomination, it is no secret that the United States’ position in the climate agreement depends on who gets elected in November.Clinton has aligned herself with the president, and has showered the Paris agreement in praise – as this ad shows from her DNC speech. On the other hand, Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are furious that President Obama didn’t submit the agreement to the Senate.
And that was a gamble for President Obama, because without Senate ratification, the agreement is not a formal treaty – and that means a President Trump could easily stick to his pledge to “cancel” it.