Trump nears decision on Paris deal
White House aide hints at exit from climate accord, but others say president has not reached a verdict.
President Donald Trump is nearing a final decision on whether to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, with one White House official saying Wednesday that the president is leaning toward an exit but three others cautioning that he had not reached a verdict.
The matter has deeply divided the administration for months. Ivanka Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have urged the president to remain in the deal, and White House strategist Stephen Bannon and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt have been pushing for a withdrawal.
A withdrawal would put the United States in the same camp as Nicaragua and Syria: a tiny group of countries refusing to
participate in the almost universally supported Paris climate change agreement.
Trump added to the intense speculation about the future of the agreement Wednesday morning, tweeting that his decision will be announced “over the next few days.”
Later in the day, he again stoked the uncertainty during a brief appearance a Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the White House. He told members of the White House press pool that he would have a decision about the Paris agreement “very soon.”
“I’m hearing from a lot of people, both ways,” he said.
More than 190 nations agreed to the accord in December 2015 in Paris, and 147 have since formally ratified or otherwise joined it, including the United States — representing more than 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
A U.S. withdrawal would remove the world’s second-largest emitter and nearly 18 percent of the globe’s present-day emissions from the agreement, presenting a severe challenge to its structure and raising questions about whether it would weaken the commitments of other nations.
Trump has already, through executive orders, moved to roll back key Obama administration policies, notably the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, that comprised a key part of the U.S.’s Paris promise to reduce its emissions 26 to 28 percent below their 2005 levels by 2025.
Internationalists, such as Tillerson, have argued that it would be beneficial to the United States to remain part of negotiations and international meetings surrounding the agreement, as a matter of leverage and influence.
Conservatives, such as Pruitt, have argued that the agreement is not fair to the United States and that it could be used as a legal tool by environmental groups seeking to fight Trump environmental policies.
Trump has long been lobbied by people on both sides of the issue, inside and outside the White House. A broad range of advocates, from former Vice President Al Gore to Pope Francis to scores of companies — including Exxon, Chevron and BP — have urged Trump to allow the United States to remain part of the global accord.
But other forces have leaned on him to exit the agreement.
Experts at the influential Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, contend that the Paris agreement should be viewed as a treaty and submitted to the Senate for approval. Trump also has cited the organization’s research concluding that remaining in the Paris accord would inflict economic harm on the United States in return for little environmental benefit — a conclusion environmental groups say is flawed.
In addition, a group of 22 Republican senators — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — wrote to Trump, urging him to exit the Paris accord.
“Because of existing provisions within the Clean Air Act and others embedded in the Paris Agreement, remaining in it would subject the United States to significant litigation risk that could upend your Administration’s ability to fulfill its goal of rescinding the Clean Power Plan,” the group wrote.
“Accordingly, we strongly encourage you to make a clean break from the Paris Agreement.”
Reactions to the prospect of Trump withdrawing from international accord came quickly on Wednesday.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and part of the White House manufacturing jobs initiative, tweeted that if Trump does leave the accord, he would have “no choice but to depart councils” on which he has advised the president.
“Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement would be a grave mistake,” Harold Wimmer, president of the American Lung Association, said in a statement.
“Everyone deserves to breathe air that will not make them sick or cause them to die prematurely. We need to cooperate globally to address climate change if we want to continue to reduce air pollution and protect public health.”
On Capitol Hill, some Democrats began to condemn the move before it had formally happened. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said leaving the Paris agreement would amount to an “abdication” of American values.
“This would be yet another example of President Trump’s ‘Putting America Last’ agenda — last in innovation, last in science, and last in international leadership,” Bennet said in a statement. “The Paris agreement has wide support — from global oil and gas companies to coal generators in our Western states. We should not be moving backwards as the rest of the world races forward to compete in the clean energy industry.”
Others cheered the notion that Trump might soon kill the climate agreement that had been such a key initiative of former President Barack Obama.
“For far too long the Obama Administration allowed foreign governments and alarmist environmentalists to dictate, not only climate change policy, but worse our nation’s economic policy,” David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative political action group, said in a statement.
“President Trump’s decision sends a strong message to the environmentalist movement: no longer will the United States be strong armed by their scare tactics intended to harm our economy and inhibit economic growth.”