David Rank, Chargé d’affaires at our embassy in the People’s Republic of China, has resigned his position and is retiring from the foreign service over President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Accord.

Although Rank is wrong on the matter, he has displayed considerable with his retirement: unlike so many Obama administration hold-overs (he held several senior diplomatic positions throughout Asia during those eight years), he’s chosen to leave the service rather than stay on and sabotage the new administration’s policies from within.

Related to this, albeit tangentially, is the AP’s carefully slanted final paragraph in its piece carrying this report of Rank’s resignation and retirement.

China and the US are the world’s two largest emitters of man-made carbon dioxide, considered a top cause of climate change, and agreement between them on capping emissions helped pave the way for the Paris agreement among more than 190 nations.

What the AP chose to elide here are two things: one is the fact that atmospheric CO2’s classification as a pollutant is based on pseudo-science.  The other is the fact that the US’ emissions rate has been on a downward path since the 1990s, while the PRC’s emissions have been growing markedly, and the PRC has no plan to begin reducing its emission rate until 2030—if then.