Some people are excited that we might elect our first woman president in November. Former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) would like us to be excited. Before we get become too enthusiastic, let’s look at what happened across the pond.
You know, in Britain, where they have a new Prime Minister, Theresa May.
As you know, the citizens of Great Britain voted to exit the European Union a couple of weeks ago. Then, Prime Minister David Cameron resigned because he opposed the Brexit proposal and didn’t think he could lead the country through it.
On July 14, 2016, Parliament elected Theresa May to replace him. May is likely to create an even bigger mess. As Common Dreams reported, one of her first actions upon taking control of the government was to abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change and replace it with a Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy.
Climate change is no longer part of the name of the agency because it’s no longer part of the mission.
“Shocking” or Business as Usual?
Not surprisingly, environmentalists were outraged. Craig Bennett, chief executive officer of Friends of the Earth, called May’s action “shocking.”
Climate change “is one of the biggest threats we face,” he said, noting that advisors to the government had recently warned of looming threats to the food and water supplies. He also warned that the British government was behind in its commitment to keep the global rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees.
Because of May’s action, no government agency in Britain is responsible for meeting that commitment,
Still, according to New Scientist, the gap between commitment and action had been growing under Prime Minister Cameron, and former chancellor George Osborne had been a driving force behind the retreat from environmental commitments.
May has apparently made statements in the past about addressing climate change, but she has voted against proposals to do so.
The New Scientist writer holds out hope for May’s administration, however. Both Greg Clark, head of the new agency, and Phil Hammond, the new chancellor, understand the risks of climate change. And both of them believe that putting resources into green jobs will benefit Britain’s economy as well.
A Woman at the Helm
None of this has anything to do with May’s gender. That’s the point.
Being born with ovaries and estrogen does not automatically make one a great leader, any more than being born with the Y chromosome does.
The real question is whether Hillary would be a better president than Donald Trump, because the odds are overwhelming that one of them will be the next president. Now, that one is a no-brainer.
Featured Image By Number 10 Via Flickr/CC by ND/NC-2.0.
