THE PARIS ACCORD

29 May, 2017

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: My fear

Why in the name of this good Earth did Trump refuse to join the other nations’ leaders in signing the ratification of the Paris Accord on climate change? I see no other reason than pure arrogance. He felt belittled in the company of those other leaders and needed, childishly, to assert himself in some way. This was the way he chose to do it. Pure spite.

He accompanied his absurd gesture with the promise to make a decision this week. What does he expect to learn in the next few days and hours that he didn’t know at the end of last week?

My fear is that now, on his return to the United States and an ocean of troubles on the home front, he’ll use this issue to compound the gesture made in Taormina last week and poke his finger in the eye of all humanity by deciding to refuse, with his customary petulance, to sign the accord. For no better reason than that he felt unloved and diminished on his European tour.

He was unloved and diminished for good reason. He is, as the Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling wrote in a Tweet, “a tiny, tiny, tiny man.” He has no standing amongst men of gravitas and serious purpose. My fear is that, like most truly “tiny” men, he will seek some way to prove his importance. And that might be at the cost of the rest of us human beings in the world.

And that’s some fear. Stand up, Congressman. Please. Before it’s too late.

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.