Even before President Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, it was clear that he intended to lead the US on a fossil fuel bender. He has made it crystal clear that the federal government has no interest in addressing climate change.
But every action has an equal and opposite reaction; his announcement on Paris has sparked an extraordinary amount of counter-organizing. In recoiling from Trump, states, cities, and institutions are entering into closer cooperation. A coalition is forming, a Blue America, and at least on climate change, it is going beyond mere resistance to a more proactive role, negotiating with the international community on its own behalf, like a separate nation.
It is, in foreign policy terms, a remarkable development — and while it seems to offer some near-term hope on climate change, it carries troubling implications for the ongoing stability of the country.
...............................................................................In the same vein, Ivo Daalder had a fantastic piece in Politico Magazine** on the need for cities to organize themselves and engage in purposeful foreign policy. Urban areas, he notes, have more in common with one another across national boundaries than they do with rural areas in their own countries. They all face traffic, congestion, and pollution. They all depend on a steady influx of outsiders and thrive on innovation and higher education. Not one of them is interested in the Trumpian recipe of xenophobia and fossil fuels.
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The commitments of the US subnational climate diaspora [states and cities] are voluntary as well. But by organizing and transparently sharing information about progress (assuming the coalition can pull itself together to do so), it could trigger a dynamic very much like the one Paris seeks to trigger at the international level: Pride and peer pressure, not the threat of legal penalties, will drive ambition.
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At least currently, Blue America has more people but less political power. That's partly what the subnational organizing is responding to.
It is often said, metaphorically, that America is becoming two separate countries, with different values and visions, occupying the same territory. But what if that becomes less metaphorical?
What will happen when Red and Blue America starting thinking of themselves as separate countries, and acting that way, consolidating their power and negotiating independently? What happens when they really start fighting?
It's a little dystopian, as it carries the whiff of a second Civil War. But as we've learned about dystopias this past decade, they need not happen all at once, dramatically. They can happen in creeping increments, each of which allows for enough of a pause that it comes to seem normal.
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Still, I can't imagine that having two parallel governments operating in the world's most powerful country is going to stay peaceful and symbolic for long. Red America — especially in its intemperate and vengeful current incarnation — is going to notice that Blue America is being hailed as an international hero for saving the US commitment to Paris. It's going to notice that Canadian officials are spending an awful lot of time with mayors. It's going to notice subnational climate and trade agreements forming under its nose.
Trump is going to notice that even though he won the presidency, the world keeps talking to the governors and mayors who oppose him. I worry it will not end well.
It is interesting that I am not the only one who has noted that such political divisiveness as we see today happened before and resulted in the Civil War. I'm not sure how such a war would happen today, but somehow it could involve rural areas against metropolitan areas (as noted in the articles cited). This would be difficult because rural areas supply the food and urban areas supply the goods.* http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/03/blue-america-reaches-out-to-the-world-ignoring-trump.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climate-paris-idUSKBN18W2DQ
** http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/06/why-cities-need-their-own-foreign-policies-215234
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