Inking the Paris climate agreement April 22, 2016, former President Barack Obama signed the U.S. to the globalist’s attempt to curtail greenhouse gasses or carbon emissions from man-made pollution causing global warming. Campaigning to scuttle the agreement to ramp up U.S. coal production, 70-year-old President Donald Trump looks Urged to continue the Paris accord by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Trump wants to fulfill a campaign promise to unemployed coal workers, now hoping to reopen the nation’s old coal mines. Withdrawing from the agreement would no doubt cause other reluctant signers to the Paris agreement to bail out, putting the Paris agreement into jeopardy. Looking to promote clean coal technology from Appalachia to the Northeast, Trump looks poised to cancel.
Obama’s over-reliance on the United Nations left the U.S. adopting a foreign policy designed to placate the European Union, something Trump has refused to do. Last week’s G-7 meeting in Taormina, Sicily showed Trump’s differences with the EU, especially German Chancellor Angel Merkel. Facing reelection Sept. 24, Merkel set Trump up, telling G-7 members that the European Union could no longer count on traditional Trans-Atlantic partnerships, pointing fingers at Washington. Merkel had no problem exploiting Trump’s unpopular views of the EU and U.N. to broaden her coalition in the Deutsche Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament. “The actions of the United States are bound to have a ripple effect in other emerging economies that are just getting serious about climate change, such as, India, the Philippines, Malyasia and Indonesia,” said Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton climate change expert.
Oppenheimer, who serves on a U.N. climate change panel, thinks any U.S. withdrawal would render the Paris agreement useless. Oppenheimer worries that Trump’s withdrawal would greatly accelerate global warming. “It is so far more likely that we will breach the danger limit of 3-6 degrees,” the average climate change needed to create catastrophic atmospheric conditions. While there’s little consensus on global warming inside the Republican Party, most climate experts see environmental dangers. “We will see more extreme heat, damaging storms, coastal flooding and risks to food security,” said Oppenheimer, pleading with Trump to leave the Paris accord in place. Running on an “America First” platform, Trump wants to honor commitments to create energy jobs in the Midwest and Northeast. Some foreign policy experts think withdrawing from the Paris accord would create havoc.
Trump faces a political backlash keeping the U.S. in the Paris Climate Agreement. “From a foreign policy perspective, it’s a colossal mistake—and abdication of America leadership,” said former Bush-43 under secretary of state Nicholas Burns. “The success of our foreign policy—in trade, military, and any other kind of negotiation—depends on our credibility. I can’t think of anything more destructive to our credibility than this,” said Burns, hyping the issue. What happens with North Korea’s nuke and ballistic missile program has little to do with Paris Accord. Whether Trump stays or leaves the Paris Agreement has little bearing on how the seven-year-old Syrian war gets resolved. Whatever happens to the Paris Climate Pact has no bearing on resetting U.S.-Russian relations or whether or not canceling the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] would benefit the U.S. economy.
Coal miners in West Virginia or Kentucky expect Trump to deliver on his promise to scuttle the Paris Agreement. “The Paris Agreement is a symbol of the Obama administration’s ‘Washington knows best’ approach to governing,” West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey and nine other state attorneys general wrote to Trump “Withdrawing form the Paris Agreement is an important and necessary step toward reversing the harmful policies and unlawful overreach of the Obama era.” Keeping the Paris agreement resonates with the globalist EU and U.N. crowd. Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would stick with Paris Agreement but not for the reasons of climate change. China has so much industrial pollution in Beijing and other major cities that it poses an implacable health risk to Chinese citizens. Losing credibility in the U.N. or EU is the last reason to stick with the Paris Agreement.
Trump faces some tough decisions when it comes to staying or ending the Paris Climate Agreement. Relations with the EU and U.N. have already been strained by extreme positions on borders and the refugee crisis. If the EU and U.N. were really concerned about Syria’s humanitarian crisis, they wouldn’t back the seven-year-old Saudi proxy war to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Obama backed the Saudi proxy war by supporting various rebel groups seeking regime change in Damascus. Whether admitted to or not, Obama added to the over 300,000 deaths and 12 million refugees flooding the Mideast and Europe. No one from the EU or U.N. acknowledges the chaos and carnage from backing the Saudi proxy war in Syria. Starting or stopping the Paris Agreement won’t stop the death, destruction and terrorism occurring in Iraq. Syria and other hot-spots around the globe.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
