USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: Paris pact withdrawal leaves U. S. as odd country out
It isn’t beyond imagination for the world to act in concert against a global environmental threat. It has happened before. When scientists found that chemicals used in refrigeration and aerosol cans were depleting a protective layer of ozone over the Earth, risking widespread skin cancer and death, nations agreed under the 1988 Montreal Protocol to a solution.
And guess what? It worked. Use of the chemicals was cut drastically. While the damage will take decades to correct, an ozone hole over Antarctica each year has grown smaller.
Global warming is a far greater and more complex threat. But the answer is still the same — the world’s nations acting as one.
Except, Donald Trump knows better. On Monday, the president took the earliest opportunity, under complex United Nations rules, to begin the yearlong process of pulling America out of the 2015 Paris climate accord signed by nearly 200 nations. The USA will be the only country to leave the pact.
Under the agreement, nations established voluntary goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and working to prevent the planet from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius ( 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre- industrial levels. The agreement is the best effort so far toward united action.
But Trump knows better.
The fossil fuel- loving president ignored federal scientists, and hundreds of others worldwide, who found evidence last year that the planet is warming faster than expected.
And that, unless trends are reversed, cataclysmic declines in crop yields and fisheries — added to losses from bigger storms, longer droughts and fiercer wildfires — will cost the U. S. economy $ 500 billion a year by 2100, double the losses from the Great Recession a decade ago.
Just last week, scientists reported that rising seas from melting glaciers and ice caps will cause the evacuation of 150 million people globally from coastal areas by 2050.
But Trump knows better.
He acted even though the United States is the second largest emitter, after China, of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas. Under President Trump’s watch, America reversed a three- year trend in reducing carbon dioxide emissions and recorded a 3.4% rise in 2018.
In the name of reducing regulations, Trump dismantled, or is dismantling, Obama- era limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and vehicles. His administration is turning a blind eye toward the broadly heralded idea of implementing a carbon tax that would reduce emissions while returning revenue to taxpayers.
More than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries issued a report Tuesday warning — in a first for the scientific community — “clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.” Also Tuesday came news that last month was the hottest October on record globally.
Most Americans get it. Eight in 10 agree that humans are to blame for global warming. And nearly four in 10 view it as a crisis.
But Trump knows better.