On Thursday, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord.
He did so despite the fact that the worldwide agreement had been signed by 197 nations and ratified by 147.
The United States joins Nicaragua and Syria as the only countries that will not be part of this agreement.
The Paris Climate Accord’s the United States objective was to reduce its greenhouse gases emissions 17 % below 2005 levels by 2020 and 26 to 28% by 2025. The United States had also committed to spending two to three billion dollars to finance international climate efforts.
The United States was the second largest contributor of greenhouse gases behind China which also joined in the agreement.
Almost every major industrial nation that was part of the problem agreed to meet certain targets to reduce the greenhouse gases that were causing the worth to warm and the polar ice caps to melt and more extreme weather to occur.
Thirty CEO’s of major corporations, urged Trump in an open letter published in the Wall Street Journal, to remain part of the agreement such as Nike, DuPont, Cargill, General Electric, Corning and EBay signing an open letter in support of that position.
During Trump’s visit to the Vatican, Pope Francis made a personal appeal to him and presented him with his 2015 encyclical on climate change.
Trump’s justification for this move rests, as usual, on a number of false premises.
He contends that the Agreement is unfair to the United States and he can renegotiate a better one.
He can’t.
There is no mechanism for him to renegotiate the Agreement with the 197 countries that have signed it and the 147 that have ratified it.
The European Union has announced that it will not renegotiate the Agreement with Trump but will bypass the Administration and deal directly with the states to meet the benchmarks to reduce greenhouse gas emission.
Consistent with that strategy, seven states, California, New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island have joined together in pledging to reduce their emissions. They comprise 15% of the country’s emissions. Two of the Governors are Republicans. Don’t be surprised if more states choose to join them.
He contends that China and India will be permitted to build hundreds of additional coal plants and we will not be allowed to.
This is false. The Agreement is nonbinding and each nation sets its own targets.
Trump has cited additional false arguments on this issue which are too numerous to enumerate here.
The United States withdrawal from the Paris Accord has a number of far-reaching consequences.
It could encourage major greenhouse gas polluters like China and India to also exit the Agreement although at present they remain committed to it.
It leaves China as the dominant force internationally on this issue and, along with other Trump pronouncements like his skepticism on NATO results in our historical western European allies to doubt our commitment to their security.
It will certainly embolden both China and Russia to be more assertive in their efforts to dominate world affairs.
In the wake of this decision it is apparent that there has been a power shift within the Trump circle once again.
Those more “moderate voices” that seemed to be restraining Trump’s worst impulses on a whole host of important issues have been shut out and Steve Bannon and his alt-right coterie have triumphed again.
The news media appears to be in a frenzy to have someone in the Administration declare whether Trump is a “climate change denier” who believes climate change and global warming is a hoax.
The silliness of this line of questioning couldn’t be more apparent.
After all, if Trump believed in climate change and global warming, he wouldn’t have appointed Scott Pruitt, a brainless and shameless shill for the oil and gas industry as the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency.
What Trump, Pruitt, Bannon and others in the Administration have accomplished by this action is that they have made themselves irrelevant on an issue of international importance.
That will allow them more time to ponder more important and critical issues.
Like whether the Earth is truly flat.