White House Confirms The US Is Leaving The Paris Climate Agreement — What Will That Actually Mean?
Thursday afternoon, President Trump formally announced in the White House Rose Garden that the US will withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
The move is a clear statement about President Trump's commitment (or lack thereof) to combating climate change — but will the actual consequences of leaving the agreement be? Here's what you should know:
The Agreement Is Non-Binding, And Is More About Messaging
As The Atlantic explains, the agreement set goals, but implements no binding terms:
In 2015, every country announced a (nonbinding) plan in which they promised to (eventually) slow down pumping carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere…The accord's architects hoped to nudge everyone into bringing down their emissions together — but they didn't (and couldn't) force any one nation to do it. More pointedly, they also could not compel a Republican-controlled US Senate to ratify any binding international climate treaty. So Paris trades in signals, not sacrifice; unanimous resolutions, not top-down restrictions.
If The US Withdraws, They Lose Their Veto Power In Future Negotiations, Which Could Be A Good Thing
As Luke Kemp argues in The Conversation, because there are no binding terms of the agreement, Trump can and already has taken steps domestically that have set the US on the path to blow the first emissions goal. Kemp argues that at this point, we should be more worried about Trump sending a message to other countries to ignore the goals of the accord or the use of the US' veto power to sabotage the agreement:
Paris has little aside from inspiring public pressure and long-term low-carbon investment patterns. Neither pressure nor the "investment signal" is likely to work if a renegade US shows that Paris is an empty global show-and-tell regime…The fourth risk is that the US will act as a spoiler in international climate talks. This requires membership. If the US remains in the agreement it will retain a veto in the negotiations.
Many Worry That The Diplomatic Damage Of Withdrawing From The Agreement Outweighs The Risks Of Staying In
Todd Stern, the special envoy who led the US team in the Paris negotiations, argues that withdrawing would send a message that would be catastrophic to US diplomacy, damaging our interests around the word:
The president's exit from Paris would be read as a kind of "drop dead" to the rest of the world. Bitterness, anger, and disgust would be the wages of this careless act. As Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, George Shultz, said recently about Paris, "[g]lobal statecraft relies on trust, reputation and credibility, which can be all too easily squandered. …[I]f America fails to honor a global agreement that it helped forge, the repercussions will undercut our diplomatic priorities across the globe."
Leaving Eliminates A Bargaining Chip Or Leverage Point In Other Negotiations
David Roberts argues in Vox that walking away from the agreement will not only leave the US in disrepute nationally, but also remove our ability to use the framework of the deal for other negotiations:
Staying at least notionally signed on to the Paris framework…would give the US, as Tillerson says, a "seat at the table," and open up opportunities for the US to make side deals on things that are climate-related but also serve other, more proximate goals — say, cuts in HFCs or cooperation on carbon capture and sequestration (which could help the US coal industry).
[Vox]
Additionally, It Would Remove The US Economically From A Predetermined Global Trajectory
Steve Cohen of the Columbia University Earth Institute told Kendra Pierre-Louis of Popular Science that logically, removing the US from an international agreement that points the world's energy markets in an economic direction will inevitably lead to economic harm:
Reducing our commitment to the Paris Agreement, reducing our commitment to the transition to renewable energy, is an act of economic suicide for the United States…What it would end up doing, frankly, is reduce America's influence in the rest of the world. So, what you'd see is America's getting out of Paris, China's going to go and sell renewable energy to Africa. I mean now they're selling them coal, soon they'll be selling them renewable energy because there'll be more money in it.
