Leaving Paris climate deal an easy decision for Trump
While there will be predictable hysteria about U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty Thursday, what he said about it was true.
It was also consistent with his pledge during the U.S. presidential election campaign to withdraw from the global climate treaty.
Simply put, he has done what he said he would do.
Trump was correct when he said Barack Obama’s endorsement of the United Nations’ treaty represented a loss of U.S. sovereignty over its own energy policy.
That’s also true for Canada, which remains committed to the Paris treaty under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Trump was correct when he said the Paris deal economically damaged the U.S. to the benefit of foreign competitors, who do not face the same constraints on their energy resources as the U.S. did under its terms.
That’s also true for Canada, which is imposing an added cost on our fossil fuel industries through Trudeau’s national carbon pricing program, that the U.S., our largest trading partner, doesn’t impose on U.S. companies.
Given that, expect Canadian federal and (most) provincial premiers to shower even more of our money on these big emitters to bribe them to stay here, instead of bolting for the U.S.
Trump was correct when he said the purpose of the Paris treaty was to redistribute wealth from the U.S. to China, India and the developing world, and to weaken its economy compared to Europe. (Also true for Canada.)
Indeed, UN climate officials have admitted global wealth redistribution is a key purpose of the Paris treaty.
Trump was correct when he said the Paris treaty will have an insignificant impact on global temperatures, even if every nation on Earth meets its non-binding emission reduction targets.
Trump concluded, as he said, that his priority as U.S. president was to put American workers and families in “Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ... ahead of Paris, France.”
It was an easy decision for him to make and it’s going to be welcomed by the people who voted for him, as opposed to Democrats, environmental activists and Hollywood celebrities who didn’t.
The real-world impact of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris treaty isn’t environmental — environmentally, it’s a fraud.
The U.S. was expected to be the most significant contributor to the United Nations’ $100-billion-a year Green Climate Fund, in which Canada is also a participant.
That’s over for the U.S. whose withdrawal from the Paris treaty also sends a clear signal to the wind and solar industry that the era of massive public subsidies from their federal government is over.
Stock market speculators, Wall Street banks, fossil fuel companies and electrical utilities will also be disappointed by Trump’s decision, as they intended to profit from government-mandated carbon pricing schemes of the type now being imposed across Canada by Trudeau and most premiers.
Given that the U.S. is the second largest emitter of industrial greenhouse gases on the planet (China’s first), and the leader of the developed world, Trump’s withdrawal effectively kills the Paris treaty, but it was always a fraud from an environmental perspective.
The real news Thursday was Trump’s announcement that the U.S. government will no longer underwrite the Paris treaty with American wealth, extracted from American workers.
That, as Trump would say, is “huge.”