US Backs Out Of Paris Climate Agreement

To the surprise of other world leaders, President Trump announced that the US will pull out of the Paris global climate pact.  Abandoning the pact would isolate the US from international allies that spent years negotiating the 2015 agreement to fight global warming and pollution by reducing carbon emissions in nearly 200 nations.

The decision means the US will join only Nicaragua and Syria as UN-member countries that aren’t aboard.  The US emits more carbon into the atmosphere than any country except China.  Abandoning the pact was one of Trump’s principal campaign pledges and the decision reverses one of the Obama administration’s signature achievements.  Still, America’s allies have expressed alarm about the likely consequences.

“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 in terms that are fair to the United States and its workers. So we’re getting out. We’ll see if we can make a deal. If we can’t, that’s fine,” Trump said to cheers during a ceremony in the Rose Garden.

A White House spokesperson said “The accord was negotiated poorly by the Obama Administration and signed out of desperation. The US is already leading the world in energy production and doesn’t need a bad deal that will harm American workers.”

The Paris climate agreement sets a goal for its signatories to keep warming below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), compared with preindustrial times, by 2100, with a goal of keeping global warming to a mere 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.  Each country sets its own voluntary goals for emissions cuts, pledging to become stricter as time goes by and there are no binding rules about how the countries should meet those goals.

When the agreement was signed, the US agreed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to between 26-28% of 2005 levels by 2025. The agreement does not officially go into effect until 2020, but meeting those goals would require all countries to take steps preemptive steps before 2020- like setting standards for vehicle emissions, appliances and power plants.

Critics of the decision to abandon the Paris agreement believe the likelihood of international cooperation on carbon-cutting goals past 2025 is on far shakier ground, and that the US will be forfeiting a seat at the table to shape the climate future.

They also feel it does enormous damage to our international credibility as withdrawal from international negotiations is becoming a pattern.  The United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal under Trump’s first executive order.  Trump is also hostile to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in which members pledge military cooperation with one another.  Many feel it will be harder to negotiate other international issues without trust from other nations.