My, how time flies. Friday marks exactly one year since President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement on man-made global warming.
The Paris accord, which the Obama administration joined in 2016, put the U.S. at an economic disadvantage with other countries — namely China and India — amounting to a plan to “redistribute wealth out” of America, Trump said.
“This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States,” Trump said on June 1, 2017, in a speech on the White House lawn.
“The agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs; it just transfers those jobs out of America,” Trump added, “and ships them to other countries.”
Trump promised to “cancel” the Paris climate accord on the campaign trail; but he took nearly six months to announce his decision, dividing his cabinet and political advisers.
Former President Barack Obama joined the Paris Agreement in 2016 without Senate approval, pledging to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. However, China only committed to “peak” emissions by 2030 while India made no promise to curtail future emissions growth.
In the end, anti-Paris accord forces won the day and convinced Trump to withdraw from the Paris Agreement in 2019, which is when the accord allows parties to withdraw.
While some conservative policy wonks want to see Trump send the Paris Agreement to the Senate where it will surely be shot down, most are content to let the U.S. slowly pull back from international climate talks until withdrawal is possible.
“What President Trump really did was declare an end to the war on affordable energy for Americans and signal that the world’s greatest republic was no longer going to going to stoop to extra-constitutional means to join governments around the world in seeking new ways to tax their citizens,” Dan Kish, distinguished fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“He is a disruptor and showed by his actions that on his watch, Americans will not be forced to become guinea pigs or lemmings,” Kish noted.
Trump’s decision “stopped the war on affordable energy,” former Trump transition team leader Myron Ebell said. Ebell, the director of energy and global warming policy at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), also touted the 183,000 manufacturing jobs created during Trump’s tenure in office.
CEI was among the groups leading the “resistance” to the Paris accord. Conservative activists and policy experts worked behind the scenes to convince Trump to stick to his campaign promise and ditch Paris.
Several key Trump administration personnel, Democrats and much of corporate America opposed leaving the Paris agreement.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner led the pro-Paris faction of Trump’s administration. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former White House energy adviser George David Banks were also strong voices against withdrawal.
Leaving the agreement would hurt the U.S. diplomatically and staying in it would have little blowback since it’s not legally binding, Pro-Paris Trump officials argued.
Conservatives groups, however, had key allies in Trump’s administration, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Pruitt went public with his opposition to the Paris accord and “used his new post as EPA administrator to orchestrate an aggressive campaign to marshal conservative opposition” to the agreement, Politico reported.
General counsel Donald McGahn was “probably the most pivotal voice” in the White House advocating for a withdrawal from the Paris agreement, a source close to the matter told TheDCNF in 2017.
“We were having trouble getting traction on the argument that the agreement poses some legal risk,” the source said. “Until he joined the conversation.”
During two closed-door meetings in 2017, McGahn warned Trump the U.S. may not be able to adjust its pledge to cut emissions, and he said environmentalists could use the Paris agreement to undermine Trump’s deregulatory agenda.
However, a letter from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and 21 other top Republican lawmakers in late May 2017 “reinforced Trump’s instincts to withdraw” from the Paris agreement, Axios reported.
CEI was pivotal in convincing senators to send the letter that gave Trump the final nudge needed to announce withdrawal.
Read more at Daily Caller
Obama didn’t bother to ask Americans, via Congress, if they should join the Paris Accord. He wouldn’t get the answer he wanted, so he tried to impose it on them, on his way out the door.
The whole thing is based on a lie. If you ask anyone to make a personal sacrifice, they might want to see where the benefit is. Not necessarily for themselves, but a tangible benefit somewhere, for someone. They saw a fraud.
The reactions from liberals Eco-Wackos the Lie A Day News Media and the Dumb-O-Crats was predictible the usial hyseria and the mindless babbling from the Granola Munchers/Tree Huggers
I love it that Prez O’Bummer can decree that the U.S. join the Paris Accord, but when Trump dumps it, he is being dictatorial and abusing his authority.
The USA was never part of the Paris accord
The USA constitution clearly bars such a unilateral commitment and
The Paris climate conspirators were well aware of that.
The climate cash is drying up but the conferences soldier on .
The positive aspect of the great climate heist is that it has royally screwed up energy costs and PO ‘d citizens such that the political scene is altering course while globalization is a tattered flag .
What ever happened to the women beater running the AG ‘s for
“Clean Energy” ?
Economically staying in the Paris Treaty can have no impact as long as we don’t try to meet the goals. Most of the nations who loudly proclaimed they are still committed to the treaty when President Trump said we would back are not going to make their goals. There are no consequences. There are also other ways to deal with the treaty. The treaty allows for nations to change their goals. The idea is these goals would be changed to commit to even few admissions, but there is nothing preventing a nation from doing the exact opposite. The treaty defines no starting base line. A nation could declear the start point to be that of the medieval warm period, or for the United States our temperatures in 1934.
The real damage of remaining in the treaty is weakening our constitutional form of government. Obama’s signing the treaty was totally non-binding since it was never ratified by the Senate. For Trump to follow the treaty’s procedures for withdrawal, he is saying that Obama’s signature was binding which increases the risk that a future president would do the same thing and get away with it.
President Trump created room for other countries to distance themselves from the Paris Pledge . (Kyoto Light ) .
Obama was banking on Hillary getting in to keep the cash flowing out but happily she face planted , threatened coal workers , and chose to call half the citizens “deplorables” .
Hillary and bunky Bill just had too much corrupt baggage to overcome and her handlers were too arrogant to see it .
The Paris Pledge has junk bond status .