The news we all knew was coming became official Thursday afternoon: President Donald Trump decided the United States will pull out of the Paris climate accord. America thereby joined Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries not part of the historic deal.
“I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that Donald Trump may have doomed the planet or the fact that he announced it like it’s an episode of The Bachelorette,” Trevor Noah said on Thursday’s Daily Show before imitating the president’s dramatic Rose Garden announcement. “‘Earth, we had a great time in the hot tub, but I’ve gotta give a rose to coal. My black beauty, I choose you.’”
“We all joke about him destroying the world, but this could be it,” the host continued. “And can I just say, telling nature to go fuck itself while standing in a garden is a pretty gangster move, I’m not going to lie. The only way that could have been more messed up is if he did it with a polar bear standing in the background. Although I’m sure Eric would have shot the polar bear.”
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“After the Earth’s temperature crosses a certain threshold we may not be able to go back,” Noah warned. “It’s like telling your girlfriend that her friend is hot. That problem is man-made and irreversible. You can never take it back.”
What makes matters worse, Noah argued, is that nearly every country in the world agreed to the Paris deal. “Even Israel and Palestine are on the same side when it comes to climate change,” he said. In response to Trump saying he was elected to represent Pittsburgh, not Paris, Noah said, “And every day, the citizens of Paris are, like, thank fuck for that.”
But while Trump thinks his decision will help bring back “old-school industrial jobs,” Noah informed him that those coal and steel jobs are never coming back. “There are certain things that you can’t bring back,” he said. “You can’t bring back coal jobs. It may have been big back in the day, but it’s not going to work now. It’s like Baywatch: You can’t save it.”
In his speech, Trump posited that the rest of the world was “laughing” at the United States for signing on to the agreement in the first place. “No one was laughing at you, Donald,” Noah said. “I mean, well, not for this. They laugh at you for many other things, but not for this. The other countries were cheering, because it was a chance to save Mother Earth, not screw Uncle Sam.”
