Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Barack Obama had a meeting Thursday, and the Internet went wild, myself included. What wasn’t there to love? Two charismatic world leaders met to talk about important issues, and Twitter finally got a break from its never-ending barrage of Donald Trump articles. Trudeau and Obama announced joint efforts to combat climate change, a move that many saw as Obama “passing the baton” on global action to his younger ally.
Trudeau looks like the perfect heir apparent for Obama as a global leader — there are obvious parallels one can make between the two men in both message and charm. Obama himself drew on some of those in a press conference when he spoke about Trudeau. He brought up the Canadian’s message of “hope and change,” an obvious comparison to his own message in 2008. As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick put it, Obama was seeing the “ghosts of elections past.”
Trudeau is everything Obama was, and probably could have been, had the United States been more cooperative. Sure, Trudeau will get gray hairs and won’t breeze through his entire stint as prime minister, but it’s hard not to feel optimistic as his country shows progressive, tolerant policies at a time when the United States is descending into violent and petty bickering.
Trudeau’s cabinet is 50 percent women and has two aboriginal politicians, two persons with disabilities and three Sikhs. He pledged to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees and literally welcomed them with open arms, as Obama’s more modest approach was met with a political firewall.
There are plenty of possible explanations for Obama’s inability to pull off these same progressive feats, from racial hurdles to the American political climate. Although, let’s be clear — the man has done a lot. And his refusal to sit idly by as a soon-to-be lame duck president while his successor remains uncertain has led him to this climate deal with Trudeau, especially seeing as climate change is a big part of the Obama legacy that still needs cementing.
Obama has brought up climate change in each of his State of the Union addresses, but despite his efforts, including rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline and unveiling his Clean Power Plan (which was then blocked by the Supreme Court), his legacy on climate change remains shaky.
So shaky, in fact, that a group of young Americans is trying to sue the president, along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Departments of Energy, Interior, Agriculture and Defense for violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property, according to Rolling Stone. Realistically, the suit probably won’t get them very far, but what a statement it makes.
The next president will have a major say in whether Obama’s actions will have lasting power or will be eliminated. Both Democratic presidential candidates have said they will build upon the measures Obama has taken.
Meanwhile, in the Republican race for president, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called climate change “pseudoscientific” and Donald Trump called it a “money-making” hoax. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who dropped out of the race Tuesday night, said at Friday’s debate that the climate was changing because it “[had] always been changing,” and that the government can’t pass a law that would stop the weather, Mother Jones reported.
The debate was held in Miami, Florida, Rubio’s home state and one of the first places that will go underwater if oceans continue to rise at the current rate, according to Mother Jones.
Global warming is one of the world’s most pressing problems, particularly because it demands action so soon and may very well reach the point where it is too late to stop.
The Paris climate summit was a good step. Obama and Trudeau’s agreement — to reduce methane emissions, raise fuel economy standards for trucks and buses and lobby other G20 countries to ratify the Paris climate deal, among other things — is another good step. But we need more. We need it now. And we’ve stopped paying attention.
Because it is an election year, as I have said before, we’ve pretty much stopped paying attention to anything else. Global issues have taken a backseat to the pettiness of this particular presidential campaign. Yes, Donald Trump is a frightening rise to an incredibly ugly side of America and by all means we should pay attention to that, but the world also exists outside of our political dinner theater.
It’s clearer than ever that we need to elect the right person to fight a bevy of pressing issues coming our way, but these same issues can’t just disappear while our candidates duke it out in our proverbial mud wrestling pit.
Obama and Trudeau are certainly still making important moves. The content of their discussion is way more important than their “budding bromance,” no matter how charming they are while playing with babies or pandas.
