Arrogant denial of scientific truth

President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris agreement is a simply catastrophic decision.

It contradicts all rational thought, science, a universal agreement on climate change, and reason itself. Trump is plunging his head further into the sand and helping push the planet toward catastrophic levels of warming, consigning future generations to economic dislocation and environmental chaos.

In the Paris agreement 195 countries set modest but important pillars of domestically determined goals, financing and carbon accounting. It is a model for how nations should solve future problems — problems even America may face.

While it is true that withdrawing from the Paris climate accord was a campaign promise of Donald Trump, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which surveys voters about their attitudes toward climate change, found that only 28% of those who voted for Trump say the United States should not participate in the Paris agreement. More than six in 10 Trump voters say the United States should tax and regulate the pollution that causes global warming.

Perhaps it is time for the other 194 nations that signed the Paris climate agreement to impose economic sanctions on the United States. These sanctions should remain in place until a future president charts a course to fully mitigate the effects of Trump’s decision.

Trump’s decision is simply an arrogant abrogation of science and cooperation. He has no right to take the world’s children and grandchildren down the path of planetary destruction.

Arne Jensen, Sliema

Dubious visions

Whenever the Mother of God has a message for Catholics, she bypasses the Vicar of Christ and appears instead to illiterate peasant children, as at Fatima. 

Mary has hundreds of magnificent churches and “sanctuaries” specifically dedicated to her. Yet on the rare occasion when she decides to make an appearance she chooses the most wretched locations in the middle of nowhere: on an oak tree – long associated with Celtic paganism – at Fatima; on a heap of stones on a desolate hillside at Medjugorje; inside a hole in a rock at Lourdes.

At Fatima, believers allegedly witnessed the mirage known as “the miracle of the sun”. Even if many persons claim to have witnessed an event contrary to our ordinary experience of nature, we should hesitate to believe them. An ophthalmologist observed: “If you stare at the sun long enough, you are going to see bizarre visual phenomena.”

The Mother of God allegedly told the children at Fatima: “Through the rosary, you can stop wars”. She would have had better results in stopping wars if she had addressed the world’s statesmen rather than illiterate peasant children. Perhaps the reason why rosaries do not stop wars is because they go against the teachings of Jesus, who disapproved of the repetition of prayers, such as the repetition of 50 “Hail Mary’s” in the rosary.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger observed in a commentary regarding Fatima:  “A careful reading of the text of the so-called third secret of Fatima... will probably prove disappointing or surprising after all the speculation it has stirred. No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled.” He questioned whether the alleged visions were “only projections of the inner world of children”.

John Guillaumier, St Julian’s

The US electorate ignored Watergate

Watergate first broke in June of 1972, a few months before the US Presidential elections of that year.

The US electorate was as accident-prone as it was last November.

They failed to see its significance.

Three months shy of two years into his presidency, Nixon in July 1974 had no choice but to hightail it out of town, as the floodgates of Watergate burst open on the scale of a Hoover Dam.

They were the most tortuous years in American politics, almost rivalling the Vietnam War.

So, should Muscat stay put in Castille after 3 June, it’s far and away from end-of-story. At least three Watergates will be lying in wait.

Joe Genovese, Birkirkara