The president is fond of a map of the United States that displays in red all those parts of the country where in 2016 a majority voted for him, and in blue those areas that favored his opponent, including Pittsburgh, a fine city that was back in the news this week in an unexpected way.
On this map the vast expanse of the country is shaded in red, which should greatly please the president when he looks at it; if he understands little else, Mr. Trump understands ratings and being No. 1 in as many markets as possible.
Land doesn't get a vote; it is, however, greatly affected by the outcome of elections.
This week, land didn't fare so well.
This week the president did as he promised during his campaign and announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris Accord on climate change, an agreement (not a treaty) in which nearly 200 countries volunteered to work individually and in their own various ways to combat climate change.
Within Mr. Trump's own administration (and, apparently, his own family), there are those who supported the United States continuing to cooperate with the rest of the world; now, we're going to be sitting this one out with our new-found strange bedfellows, Syria and Nicaragua.
Note to the rest of the world: Please don't judge us by the company we'll be keeping.
The affects of climate change are ubiquitous, there is no escaping them, no matter where you live, something Americans realize; recent data shows that by a ratio of 5-1 they want their government cooperating with the rest of the world on climate change.
Climate change doesn't discriminate between red and blue; in the red areas on that map of which the president is so fond, polls show that a majority of Americans want the country to be a part of the Paris Accord and to take action to curb climate change.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may still believe that climate change is a hoax, but he's in the minority; in his home state of Kentucky, data shows that 56 percent want the United States to stay in the Paris Accord.
Big business and environmentalists alike want the United States to be cooperating with the rest of the world in acting to reduce carbon emissions.
And we have to act. We can't build a wall around the country thinking that will do the trick.
Hysterical claims about how being a partner to the Paris Accord would cost the U.S. jobs and weaken the country economically recalled similar claims (voiced by many of the same pundits and politicians) about how the Affordable Care Act was a great job killer.
That hasn't proved to be the case (see recent unemployment numbers), and neither would have continuing in the Paris Accord meant a loss of jobs. Technological innovation, in particular automation, is proving lethal to employment in certain industries, but we're not about to go all Luddite about it.
There was news on Saturday that Mr. Trump himself is hedging somewhat on whether he still believed climate change was “a total con job.” In an interview to air today on CNN's “State of the Union,” Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who is now U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said that the president “believes the climate is changing. And he believes pollutants are part of that equation. So that is a fact. That is where we are.”
Haley, who seems to be a sensible sort in an administration in which sensibility seems in such short supply, also said that “Just because the U.S. got out of the club (it) doesn't mean we aren't going to care about the environment.”
For the red, for the blue, for all the other hues, about that we hope Ambassador Haley is right.