America’s climate surrender an obstacle for progress

Trump’s rejection of the global climate consensus has paved the way for other nationalist sceptics to follow suit

This week, US president Donald Trump made it official. He confirmed America’s plans to officially withdraw from the Paris climate accord in a year’s time — that is, a day after the 2020 presidential election. The action was initiated on Monday, which was the first possible day to exit the accord with a one-year waiting period under rules set out by the United Nations.

“Should a Democrat win the White House, the nation could re-enter the agreement after a short absence — as numerous candidates have pledged,” reported The Washington Post’s Brady Dennis. “But if Trump prevails, his re-election would probably cement the long-term withdrawal of the United States, which was a key force in helping forge the global effort under President Barack Obama.”

Trump’s hostility toward collective global efforts to curb emissions — and progressive environmental policy writ large — puts him at odds with some of the US’s leading companies, which recognise the long-term effects to their own bottom line posed by climate change. Recent polling also shows that a significant majority of Americans believe Trump is doing too little to tackle climate change, while about 8 in 10 Americans now believe that human activity is fuelling global warming.

The Trump administration is trying to present itself as a sensible actor. “In international climate discussions, we will continue to offer a realistic and pragmatic model ... showing innovation and open markets lead to greater prosperity, fewer emissions, and more secure sources of energy,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a statement on Monday.

Call for radical action

These radical measures are necessary, argue many scientists and climate policy advocates, because of the enormity of the peril facing the planet. Just this year, we have seen a cavalcade of new studies laying out the already apparent effects of man-made global warming, including rising sea levels and increasingly extreme weather events that will cost untold funds and disruption in the years to come. By the middle of this century, swelling oceans may force around 150 million people to leave their homes.

The Paris agreement set as a goal to keep the planet’s warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and ideally not above 1.5 degrees. But the emissions-cutting pledges promised in 2015 are now all widely viewed as insufficient for the crisis at hand. A recent Washington Post analysis of multiple temperature data sets determined “numerous locations around the globe” had already warmed by at least 2 degrees Celsius over the past century. “That’s a number that scientists and policymakers have identified as a red line if the planet is to avoid catastrophic and irreversible consequences,” my colleagues wrote. “But in regions large and small, that point has already been reached.”

Trump’s critics in the United States say that, beyond his dangerous dismissal of the science, he’s spurning a chance for America to be an industry leader on wind, solar and other renewable energies.

It has also become clear that Trump’s rejection of the global climate consensus has paved the way for other nationalist sceptics to follow suit. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has appointed climate sceptics to key positions in his cabinet and it’s doubtful that his government will seek to meet the ambitious emissions pledges made by its predecessors. This week, right-wing Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, another advocate of big coal, proposed criminalising forms of climate activism.

“When the world’s biggest economy and a significant emitter says we don’t care about [climate change], that’s a signal for others to not to do so much,” said Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings last September. Speaking to Today’s Worldview in her capacity as a member of the Club de Madrid, a gathering of democratically elected former world leaders, Clark hailed the work done by American governors and mayors “to manage around” Trump’s intransigence and enact climate-minded reforms in their jurisdictions.

But Trump’s position remains an obstacle for progress. “The biggest cost is subsidising a dying fossil fuel industry,” UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres said in September, “building more and more coal power plants and denying what is plain as day — that we are in a deep climate hole, and to get out, we must first stop digging.” The American president, though, seems determined to hold onto his shovel.

■ Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post.