President Trump and President Xi of China recently met. Imagine a world in which Trump and Xi, the leaders of the two largest national economies, came up with a plan to combat climate change, commit to renewable energy, and clean up the effects of industrial pollution.
Here is my envisioning of Trump and Xi focusing on a transition to sustainability instead of trade deals and monetary policies. It is modeled on Trump’s actual recent speech in which he re-committed to the old energy models of coal, oil, and gas. This post reimagines the American President as pro-planet instead of pro-coal. In a world where humanity was meeting the evolutionary challenge presented by the ecological crisis, here is what a dialogue might have sounded like between the leaders of the nations with the largest economies, consumption, pollution, and ecological footprint. (The actual meeting lacked any discussion on climate change or clean energy.) May this aspirational alt-news become real news while we still have time to address the human ecological crisis.
President Trump: Chinese President Xi Jinping and I had a great meeting. I told President Xi, I said, let’s deal with climate change the way you deal with economic development – because this is going to be a great operation. And we agreed on a plan to reduce emissions and pollution. Together, China and the U.S. are going to do a truly great job for our planet. We have a very, very impressive group here to celebrate the start of a new era in American and Chinese clean energy production and job creation.
Today, we are eliminating obstacles to deal effectively with climate change. We are restoring economic incentives for clean energy development, and allowing our companies and our workers to thrive, compete, and succeed on a level playing field for the first time in a long time, fellas.
President Xi: I couldn’t agree more with you. We are going to try to turn around the collective ship of humanity which is heading full steam ahead for an iceberg. One of the ways were going to do that is by engaging our religious communities— Buddhist, Daoist Confucian, Christian, and Muslim. They all have profound religious teachings to promote sustainable living. You…
