Predictable exits: Trump and the Paris agreement

The environmental side of things are far from the only matters at stake here. Green matters are also political ones, and slipping away from the Paris agreement will leave a vacuum that will be filled, one way or another.

China remains posed to assume the mantle, which will provide endless grist to the public relations mill. But even the PRC faces its own internal battles and battlelines, notably in the area of state-owned coal companies.

The last time such a sentiment found form was the founding of the League of Nations, a body that would, in the duration of its troubled life, constantly wish for US participation. Caught in its state of normalcy, as the term came to be known, the United States went into something of international hibernation from 1919. It would only wake up with a violent Japanese jolt at Pearl Harbour in 1941.

The ensuing participation in the Second World War, when the League had, effectively, been charred beyond recognition. For irreconcilable pessimists, the next charring may well be underway, only this time on a far more global scale.