I have to admit I have had mixed feelings about our governor, Chris Sununu (R-NH).
There are times when I wonder if he really is as conservative as I had hoped he would be. The recently passed state budget and his push for all-day kindergarten (funded by expanding gambling by way of Keno run by the state lottery) made me wonder if he was just a version of Maggie Hassan, former spend-thrift governor and now US Senator (D-NH).
Then there's this move by him that has me thinking that he is more conservative than he lets on. “This” is his move when he was asked if he would have New Hampshire sign on to the United States Climate Alliance, a state-level agreement to uphold the objectives of the Paris climate accord developed after President Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from that do-nothing accord.
Sununu hit it right on the head when he called the alliance “quasi-meaningless” and “more of just a political statement than anything.” When one thinks about it the alliance is nothing more than a means of virtue signaling writ large. As Sununu also stated, the alliance founders – the governors of California and New York – are championing the alliance as a means to “distract from their states’ shortcomings.”
One of my co-workers, a dyed in the wool liberal, decried Trump's decision to have the U.S. withdrwaw from the accord. I asked him if he had actually read the conditions and obligations the accord would impose and he said he hadn't. My response to him - “Then read the damn thing. You'll find it isn't what you've been told what it does or what it obligates the U.S. to do while at the same time allowing both China and India to dramatically increase their CO2 emissions.”
A few days later he came back to me and told me he actually spent the time to read it. He then stated that Trump was right to “get us out of that awful agreement.” Apparently his only knowledge of the contents and obligations of the Paris Accords were what he heard on NPR, saw on MSLSD and CNN, or from friends who were part of the same political echo chamber. They never made mention that the only nation that would have to greatly reduce their already reduced emissions and pay hundreds of billions of dollars to “fight climate change” was the U.S.
So my co-worker learned two valuable lessons from this: Climate change agreements that punish the only major nation that has actually decreased its CO2 emissions aren't worth the paper they're written on and; his favorite news outlets have been going out of their way to lie to the American public while also ignoring the truly important stories.
There's hope for him yet.
