Trump spurns climate accord
Paris Agreement: President rejects intense efforts to keep U.S. in pact
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s decision Thursday to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord brought plaudits from Capitol Hill Republicans but scathing condemnation from around the world and the nation — while California Gov. Jerry Brown vowed an aggressive push to reduce carbon emissions with like-minded states.
Trump rebuffed intense personal pleas from European leaders and American corporate chieftains, including Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook of California. He
said leaving the Paris accord would save manufacturing and coal mining jobs in the United States, boasting that new mines were opening in Appalachia.
“In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord but begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States,” Trump said. “So we’re getting out, and we will see if we can negotiate a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine.”
Trump’s action fulfills a campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris accord, an agreement by 195 nations to submit to voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The effort was led by then-President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping.
While the U.S. has not ratified the agreement, the Obama administration had agreed to abide by it, promising a 28- to 36-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Scientists said Trump’s action could have grave consequences for the planet, making it less likely that the world will avoid the 3.6-degree Fahrenheit rise in temperatures used as a benchmark for dangerous and irreversible climate change.
In response to Thursday’s decision, Brown, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee announced the formation of the United States Climate Alliance. The governors said the coalition would convene like-minded states to uphold the Paris targets and leverage aggressive climate action at the state level.
Much hangs on whether the rest of the world, along with a host of U.S. states and cities and hundreds of major corporations, work to offset the federal government’s relaxation of carbon reductions. Some analysts contend that the solar, wind and other renewable technologies have already radically altered the energy sector and there is no turning back, while others believe there is no substitute for federal action.
California “can be a model, a large-scale, proof-of-concept of how to be rich and sustainable at the same time and create good jobs for our citizens, but we can’t solve the climate problem on our own,” said Michael Wara, a professor of environmental law at Stanford University and a former climate scientist.
Dan Reicher, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford, agreed, noting that the administration has already moved to dismantle climate policies aimed at meeting the Paris target.
“The federal government’s budget for clean energy vastly outstrips anything we can realistically expect states to come up with,” he said. “From a technological standpoint, the federal government is a difficult player to replace.”
But Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and director of its Atmosphere and Energy Program, said the transition to clean energy is already under way and cannot be stopped, because wind and solar are now by far the cheapest new electric power sources and far cleaner than fossil fuels. Jacobson also pointed to the other states, the 28 U.S. cities and major businesses that have committed to 100 percent renewable energy.
People can deny climate change, he said, but “still be for renewable energy because of the benefits: the jobs benefits, the cost benefits, the health benefits. Renewable energy is now employing huge numbers of people in the United States and is really a bright spot in the economy.”
Meanwhile, Brown is headed to China this week to attend an international climate summit and push clean-energy policies. In a telephone news conference, Brown called Trump’s move “insane.”
“California will resist,” he said. “The world depends on a sustainable future. He is going the other way. It’s going to affect people’s health, the stability of countries, our entire future.”
Musk expressed his disappointment after Trump’s speech in a tweet that said he was cutting his ties with the president.
“Am departing presidential councils,” Musk said. “Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
Strong support to leave the accord came from the coal industry and 20 Republican senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who sent a letter to Trump urging the withdrawal.
In a 50-minute speech delivered from the White House Rose Garden, Trump cited a study sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that projected the Paris accord would cost the U.S. 2.7 million jobs by 2025. But the study is an outlier. Government sources show four times as many jobs in solar than coal, while wind employment was up 32 percent last year.
More than 1,000 companies lobbied Trump to stay in the agreement, including oil company executives who want certainty in U.S. energy policy.
The United States is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind only China, and has by far the largest share of accumulated total emissions. A U.S. exit from the accord will take at least three years to execute and put the nation in the company of war-torn Syria and Nicaragua, the only other countries on Earth that refuse to enter the pact. Nicaragua held out for a stronger agreement.
Analysts predict that Trump’s move will have profound and long-lasting diplomatic repercussions. Europe and China announced new collaborations on climate, and some foreign ministers suggested there could be economic retaliation, possibly in the form of a carbon tax on U.S. goods.
John Holdren, Obama’s former science adviser, said in an interview that Trump will also face headwinds from the American public, which is increasingly seeing evidence of climate change all around them. The fault with the Paris accord, he said, is that it should have happened in 1990.
“We knew everything in 1990 that was needed to justify the kinds of measures that the world finally took in 2015,” he said. “We lost a quarter of a century, in substantial part because of people sowing false doubt about the reality of climate change.”