When we hear of the country Nicaragua, many of us will associate it with the vicious war that Ronald Reagan waged against that country, using the CIA-supported Contra mercenaries an terrorist proxies to destabilize that country by killing people and inflicting damage on schools and hospitals and other soft targets, simply because the Reagan administration did not approve of the Sandinista government led by Daniel Ortega.

But what many may not realize is that Nicaragua is now a world leader in using sustainable sources to meet its energy needs. When Donald Trump announced that he was withdrawing from the Paris climate change accords, he joined only two other countries in the world (the others being Syria and Nicaragua) in not being part of it. But the reason Nicaragua did not sign on was because they felt that the accords did not go nearly far enough in setting targets limiting greenhouse gas outputs and the rise in temperatures.

Nicaragua’s reason for refusing the deal, though, is not because it wanted to burn more fossil fuels, but because the agreement did not go far enough.

The country already gets more than half of its energy from renewable resources, and plans to bump that up to 90% by 2020.

A 2013 World Bank report labelled it “a renewable energy paradise”, with extensive opportunity for geothermic, wind, solar and wave energy.
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The US outputs some 5.2 million kilotons of carbon dioxide every year. Nicaragua, by contrast, generated about 4,569.

Trump is making sure that the US will be among the last to reap the rewards of switching to renewable energy.