California’s time to lead
As President Trump withdraws, this state must move ahead. His decision to dump a global agreement to curb climate change heightens the critical role that California plays in meeting the planet’s top environmental problem.
Trump’s move, delivered in blunt and unapologetic terms, made it clear he has no interest in the Paris accords reached in 2015 to limit rising global temperatures. His disastrous action will undercut U.S. leadership around the world, chill a growing green economy and worsen chances to head off climatic disruption.
But his choice is bringing a response. States such as California are pushing ahead with their own policies, rules and incentives to meet the climate change threat and redesign their economies. From cleaner power plants to electric cars, Sacramento is setting a pace to improve the workplace, roads and homes in the state. This message has reached major businesses that pressed the Trump White House to stick with the accord.
Trump is missing these opportunities with a hidebound refusal to change. His speech hit on oldschool doubts about the need to change: invoking the prospect of vanishing jobs, advantaged foreign competitors and lost American sovereignty. He heaped praise on the fading coal industry and blasted India and China for supposedly gaming the treaty for special favors. While he professed a willingness to retool the treaty, it’s hard to imagine a way around his hardline objections. This White House seems to be through with the subject and doesn’t care what other countries think.
His decision makes for a monumental political blunder, at home and abroad. His unpopularity in California can’t sink much lower, but elsewhere in the country climate change worry is also a frontand-center issue. Just as repealing the Obama health plan is producing a nightmare for Republicans, so will turning the nation’s back on tamping down greenhouse gas emissions. Allies around the world must wonder if this White House can be trusted — or is ready or willing to retain global leadership.
Dumping the accord will take several years to play out officially. That means that future elections could produce a fresh direction or a change of mind by an impulsive president.
For now, Trump’s action hamstrings the Paris deal’s global reach and its goal of avoiding of a 3.6 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperatures that scientists predict will produce dangerous and irreversible climate change. Already yearly temperatures have reached historic highs, with weather swings among the harshest on record. Doing nothing, as Trump proposes, worsens the risks of an unchangeable future that is already emerging.
In the face of Trump’s move, it’s more important than ever to meet the climate change threat at the state and local level. Both the Bay Area and California have elected officials who appreciate the challenge and opportunity for leaders, in politics and business, who are willing to lead.