Trump really does represent Pittsburgh…circa 1906

Taking criticism over his decision to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement, faux-president Donald J. Trump said on Thursday he “represents Pittsburgh, not Paris.”  Surprisingly, I find this statement to be true, at least in part.

Donald Trump and his former-EPA-suing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt represent the Pittsburgh of the turn of the century – the 20^th Century – when the steel mills and factories were booming and the citizens couldn’t breathe. Here’s what it looked like then (click photos to enlarge):

Smoke pours from a steel mill, 1906.

Scenes from Downtown, 1940s

Back then the rule was commerce first and health be damned, which is sort of what Trump said he wants yesterday during his Rose Garden reality show. "This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States," he said. "Withdrawing is in America’s economic interest and won’t matter much to the climate."

Except when it does.

To be fair, I don’t think we’ll go all the way back to those smog-filled days of industrial pollution, but we did take a giant step backward yesterday by abandoning a “voluntary” climate change initiative signed by 194 of the world’s leading nations.

You know, world leaders like we used to be before Trump came along to Make America Paleozoic Again.

I have a saying that I may have made up myself or gotten from someone else (I forget), but it doesn’t matter because it’s my saying now. It goes, “You can never get where you’re going unless you take the first step.” This saying assumes that your first step is forward, of course, and not backward into an ugly past. The Paris agreement was one major step forward in combating global climate change. Trump’s withdrawal yesterday was one giant leap in the wrong direction.

I don’t know how far backward Trump will drag us before he is stopped, or when someone else will be elected to start moving us forward again, or how long that will take or whether I’ll even be alive to see it. I just know that we are losing more ground under Trump’s presidency than at any other time in U.S. history, save for such catastrophic events as the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, the Wall Street crash of 1929, the Great Depression and the 9-11 attacks.

Congratulations, Mr. Trump. You’ve made the record books.