TRUMP ROLLS BACK OBAMA’S GLOBAL WARMING MEASURE
EPA administrator suggests no contradiction in latest executive order and remaining in Paris accord
President Donald Trump’s executive order rolling back Obama’s signature global warming measure stopped short of withdrawing from the historic Paris climate accord — but raised international concerns Tuesday about whether the U.S. will do its share to fight the global threat.
Europe’s top climate official, European commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete, expressed “regret” about President Trump’s executive order rolling back what he called the “main pillar” of U.S. climate policy, the Clean Power Plan, in a statement to The Washington Post.
“Now, it remains to be seen by which other means the United States intends to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement,” said Cañete.
“Despite all the current geopolitical uncertainties, the world can count on Europe to maintain global leadership in the fight against climate change. We will stand by Paris. We will defend Paris, and we will implement Paris.”
The words of Cañete, one of the most prominent global diplomatic figures yet to comment on Trump’s move, signal how the president’s executive order eviscerating Obama’s climate plan is raising international concerns and further suggests the U.S. could be left isolated as other nations push forward to curb emissions.
Trump’s executive order stopped short of withdrawing from the historic Paris climate accord — which Trump had vowed to “cancel” during the campaign — but it’s far from clear how the U.S. will now be able to meet its commitments under that 2015 agreement, in which more than 195 governments committed to actions to hold the planet’s warming “well below” a danger zone of 2 degrees Celsius.
Those concerns about U.S. climate commitments under a Trump presidency could come up in May, when diplomats gather for a working group meeting on the Paris climate agreement.
“We will have to wait to see how the Trump administration explains its actions to other countries when they meet in Bonn, Germany, in May,” said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
However, according to the terms of the Paris agreement the U.S. will not be called to account for its emissions reductions commitments until 2023, Ward said.
The Paris agreement depended on individual commitments from each country to reduce emissions. The Clean Power Plan, which Trump’s order seeks to rescind, was a core part of the U.S. commitment to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below their 2005 levels by the year 2025.
Under that domestic plan, the U.S. pledged to cut 28 to 29 percent of the U.S.’s carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector by 2025 — one of the main sources of these emissions.
Already, allies and nations that have been pushing for — or taking — strong action on climate change are concerned.
“The reality is that the Paris Agreement’s commitments alone do not go far enough to limit warming,” said Thoriq Ibrahim, energy and environment minister for the Maldives and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, a key player in international climate negotiations, in a statement to The Washington Post.
“All countries need to do more and do it faster. The good news is that we are already witnessing a dramatic transition to renewables in global energy markets. The trend appears unstoppable, but small islands would certainly feel better about our chances if the world’s biggest economy stayed on track to meet its targets.”
Jiang Kejun, a researcher at the Chinese government think tank Energy Research Institute, said Trump’s decision to scrap the Clean Power Plan would be “a bad signal” and Beijing was watching closely.
“It’s indeed a rather negative news,” Jiang said, but he insisted that it’s not necessarily impacting China in a negative way. “China’s general policy will not retreat. In fact, it might have to do more and reach out to more partners elsewhere, such as EU and Japan.”
The Obama administration also heavily courted another major player, India — which is projected to see the largest growth in energy demand in coming years — seeking climate change collaboration. It’s unclear how the Trump administration’s rollback could affect that country’s outlook.
Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, seemed to suggest on Sunday that there was no contradiction between the U.S. backing away from the Clean Power Plan and remaining in the Paris agreement.
“The Clean Power Plan is not tethered to the Paris accords,” Pruitt said on ABC. Pruitt also remarked that overall U.S. emissions have been declining, “largely because of innovation and technology in the coal sector and the natural gas sector.”
However, while emissions in the U.S. could continue to decline because of market forces and coal-to-gas switching, and a growth in renewable sources of electricity, it is hardly assured that will continue.
Without any regulation in place — or with a weaker one — the U.S. conceivably could switch back to burning more coal if natural gas prices rise enough. The U.S. Energy Information Administration is predicting a slight uptick in coal burning in 2017, because of higher natural gas prices.
Overall, estimates vary on just where the U.S. will be in 2025 or 2030 without the Clean Power Plan.