“The United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord,” President Donald Trump announced Thursday afternoon, keeping a promise he made on the campaign trail. The U.S. will renegotiate the deal or work on creating an entirely new deal on “terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its tax payers,” he said. “If we can [renegotiate] that’s great, and if we can’t that’s fine.”
The signatories of the 2015 Paris climate accord pledge to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gases and financing poorer countries to do the same. The United States is just behind China as the world’s second largest emitter of carbon dioxide.
But Trump said his decision was based on economic terms, as the agreement imposes “draconian” burdens on the American economy, and it is “less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the U.S.”
He said under the Paris agreement, countries like India would double coal production by 2020 and China could increase emissions for a “staggering” number of years.
Former President Barack Obama was instrumental in putting together the Paris accord. Following Trump’s announcement, he issued a statement raising concern about America’s place in the world.
“I believe the United States of America should be at the front of the pack,” he said in the statement. “But even in the absence of American leadership… I'm confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we've got.”
Now, some argue, U.S. leadership is waning and other countries are ready to fill the void.
“This decision cedes America’s global leadership on international affairs to China, Russia, and other countries that will rapidly seek to fill the vacuum left by America’s isolationist withdrawal,” former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Sherri Goodman told The Cipher Brief.
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, during a visit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin earlier this week, reaffirmed China’s commitment to “steadfastly” implement the Paris climate agreement, noting that, both China and Germany are “ready to contribute stability to the world.”
But Nick Loris, the energy and environment expert at Heritage, said the President “demonstrated resolute leadership” by his decision and that “without any impact on global temperatures, Paris was the open door for egregious regulation, cronyism and government spending that would have been as disastrous for the American economy as it is proving to be for those in Europe.”
“It is a geopolitical mistake of significant proportion undermining U.S. credibility throughout the world,” former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and Cipher Brief Expert Admiral James Stavridis told The Cipher Brief.
Less credibility means less leverage in international dealings, beyond climate change, Kelly Sims Gallagher said.
Gallagher, who is Director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy and Climate Policy Lab at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, explained, “By withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the United States portrays a lack of trustworthiness, which will make it harder for President Trump to negotiate with crucial allies on other pressing challenges including the nuclear crisis in North Korea.”
But is it actually a threat to national security?
Goodman, who also sits on the Advisory Board of the Center for Climate and Security (CCS), calls Trump’s decision “isolationist and backward-looking,” which she says “leaves America less prepared to cope with an array of global challenges, and further exposes our military to unnecessary risks, by forcing them more frequently into harms’ way when the threat multiplier of climate change is ignored.”
Retired Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the former Chief of Naval Operations, disagrees, telling The Cipher Brief, “I do not see any impact on the military.”
And Trump vowed that despite pulling out from Paris, the U.S. “will continue to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly country on earth.”
“Between the years 2000 and 2014, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by more than 18 percent,” added Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt. “Our efforts should be on exporting our technology and innovation to nations who seek to reduce their CO2 footprint – to learn from us.”
It’s unclear whether other nations will agree to renegotiate what was a difficult, multi-year effort to reach the climate accord in 2015. If they do, Loris offered a word of caution. “Any attempted renegotiation of the Paris accords must achieve measurable environmental gains, not cause economic harm, and should not spend a penny subsidizing energy technologies or transferring wealth to other countries.”
Kaitlin Lavinder is a reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @KaitLavinder.
