President Donald Trump told the American people in June of 2017 that he intended on pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement. This is obviously not an immediate decision and would take a year to officially withdrawal from such an agreement. The official withdrawal documents were sent in on November 4, 2019 and it will take a year for the actual withdrawal to happen, marking November 4, 2020 as the official date the US will pull out of the Paris Climate agreement (Woodward, 2019).
The Paris Climate Agreement was created to try and tackle the idea of climate change and to bring all of the Nations in the world together to work towards this common goal. To be more specific, the aim of the agreement is to try to keep the global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius below what the temperatures were before industrial times (United Nations 2015). The total number of nations that have ratified the Agreement as of today can be found through this link:
https://unfccc.int/process/the-paris-agreement/status-of-ratification
The picture below outlines a few goals for the criteria that the World Resources Institute outlined that if achieved will help turn the world in the right direction and work towards meeting the ideas of the Paris Agreement.
Trump's reasoning for leaving the Paris Agreement is that it puts too much of an economic burden on the American people. He also stated that greenhouse gas emissions had dropped up to 13% between the years 2005 and 2017 which further backed his argument (Woodward, 2019). The US received a lot of criticism for this decision and the CEO of the World Resources Institute made a public statement saying that Trump's decision was "driven by outdated views from from the last century that held that climate action was costly and hurt jobs."
There are a few possible repercussions that could result because of the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. The US is the second highest country in the world for greenhouse gas emissions and by the US withdrawing, the Agreement has lost a huge chunk of control over the worlds emissions. Now that one of the worlds largest emitters no longer is under the control of the Agreement, the other top countries have to be convinced to pick up the slack and work even harder (Johnson, 2019). This will be even more difficult to convince other countries and is a problem that will need to be addressed. Another problem that may arise is tariffs and/or taxes on goods and services coming from a country outside of the Paris Agreement. France even came out and publicly said that they will be against any trade negotiations from countries that are not a member of the Paris Agreement which could have an even harsher impact on the US economy (France Opposes EU Trade Agreement with the US, 2019).
All in all, the United State's decision to back out of the Paris Climate Agreement for economic reasons may cause many more economic problems for the US. With powerful countries already coming out and publicly stating that they will be against trade negotiations with non-members it is a bad sign for what is to come. The US can rejoin the Agreement at any time, however, while remaining not a member the US could face economic hardships because of their decision to withdrawal.
Sources:
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/what-is-the-paris-agreement
https://www.wri.org/resources/data-visualizations/tracking-progress-2020-climate-turning-point
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/05/paris-climate-agreement-united-states-withdraw/
https://www.gouvernement.fr/en/france-opposes-eu-trade-agreement-with-the-us
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-pulling-us-out-paris-climate-agreement-2019-10
1 comment:
I really enjoyed reading this blog post because it reaffirms many concerns Americans have with our decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. As global warming and climate change become more of an issue in the minds of Americans, this decision is a step backwards. The need to reduce our emissions and promote green living is of the utmost importance at the moment, and the decision to remove ourselves from the agreement will have the reverse effect. I also thought it was very smart to include the effect this has on our international trading relationships, and who the real losers are with our nationalist trade strategy. Imposing sanctions and tariffs on major goods make it more expensive for American citizens to purchase these goods, which does the opposite of the intended effect. All in all, the Paris Climate Accord was a major achievement and step in the right direction, and removing ourselves from it is a horrific decision.
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