Standing in the White House Rose Garden, President Donald Trump today announced the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, a global agreement inked by 195 signatories last year.
The deal encourages parties to make emissions commitments every five years and creates an international fund for developing countries to combat climate change.
After weeks of mulling the decision, and following international pressure to stay in the agreement, President Trump left no doubt over what he thought of the deal.
In a speech slamming the deal, President Trump cast his decision as a matter of sovereignty, painting the Paris agreement as a mechanism for other countries to suppress American economic prosperity and redistribute wealth.
President Trump, who has previously claimed that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese to weaken the US, said that withdrawal from the deal will be a boost to jobs, particularly in the coal industry.
But international legal experts and climate scientists have described the President’s comments as “absurd” and “absolute BS”.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers behind a study cited by the President have said he badly misunderstood their findings.
Trump: The deal was designed to weaken America
“This agreement is less about the climate and more [about] countries gaining a financial advantage to the United States,” President Trump said.
“The world went crazy when the Paris agreement was signed. They went wild. This was because it placed America at a serious economic disadvantage.”
Professor Andrew Macintosh, Associate Director of the Australian National University Centre for Climate Law and Policy, said the claim that the Paris agreement is some sort of conspiracy is “the reverse of reality”.
“The truth is that the Paris climate agreement was very much shaped by the American interest and by the desire to ensure that it didn't tie down America or America's economic interests,” he said.
“The desire amongst most of the major players to placate the United States meant that in the end the outcome was relatively.”
Professor Rosemary Lyster, Director of the Centre for Climate and Environmental Law at the University of Sydney, said that all countries have made commitments under the deal.
“The United States was not singled out and no commitments were imposed upon the United States,” she said.
Professor Ann Carlson, Director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles, was even more strident.
“The argument is honestly just absurd,” she said.
“The agreement is entirely voluntary. The US can determine its own contributions to cutting emissions.”
Trump: It undermines American sovereignty
President Trump asserted that withdrawal from the Paris agreement represented a “reassertion of America’s sovereignty.”
“Asia and across the world should not have more to say with respect to economy than our own citizens and their elected representatives,” he said.
Professor Carlson rejected that argument.
“Asia has no control over our economy under the treaty," she said. "Our contributions to cutting emissions are voluntary and moreover, if we fail to meet them, there are no enforcement mechanisms.”
Professor Lyster said that the agreement is explicitly respectful of each nation’s sovereignty.
“By allowing countries to offer up their own targets the Paris agreement acknowledges the individual sovereignty of all countries,” she said.
Trump: Leaving the agreement will be good for the economy
President Trump grounded his rationale for leaving the Paris agreement in economics.
“The Paris accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risk and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world,” he said.
But experts have said that given the voluntary nature of the Paris accord and the lack of legal enforcement mechanisms, remaining part of the agreement would have little economic downside.
“If he was so concerned about this agreement hurting the American economy there’s plenty of scope for America to stay in the agreement and not by to basically do anything meaningful,” Professor Macintosh said.
Professor John Quiggin, from the School of Economics at the University of Queensland, said the decision was motivated purely by politics.
“[It] is not based on scientific evidence or on the economic interests of the United States, but on the political imperatives of the culture wars being waged by the political right in the US, imperatives that led to his nomination and election,” he said.
Professor Matthew England, a Climate Scientist from the University of NSW, said that the decision to withdraw could actually hurt American economic interests.
“This is a huge backward step for the US economy - they're now going to be left behind while the rest of the world innovates and develops new technologies to solve this problem,” he said.
Trump: Major emitters got away with doing very little
President Trump slammed the Paris agreement for letting major emitters like China and India off the hook while punishing the United States - the world’s second largest emitter.
“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” he said.
“As someone who cares deeply about the environment, which I do, I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States – which is what it does – the world's leader in environmental protection, while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world's leading polluters.”
Professor Lyster said that as the second biggest emitter and a leading developed country economy, the US is expected to do more to deal with climate change than many other countries.
Kevin Trenberth, a senior climate scientist at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, went further, describing President Trump’s justifications as “BS”.
“It is a matter of taking responsibility for our past actions,” he said.
“The US is far more responsible for all the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than any other country.”
Professor Macintosh told SBS World News it was true that India in particular has done little in terms of climate mitigation.
“Then again, India has many millions of people living in grinding poverty so you can understand their desire to ensure that they prioritise economic growth,” he said.
“But in China they are rolling out large amounts of renewable energy, they're also investing very heavily in research development and demonstration of new technologies, so I think it's a bit harsh to say that China hasn't done anything.”
Professor Carlson said the Chinese commitment under the current agreement was “quite ambitious”.
“Remember that China is only beginning to see the kind of economic prosperity the US has long enjoyed,” she said.
“Yet India and China are increasingly turning to renewable energy to fuel their energy needs, and China's emissions are already tapering off.”
Trump: The deal would be ineffectual
President Trump said that the Paris deal was both onerous and ineffective.
“Even if the Paris agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree – think of that, this much – Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100 – a tiny, tiny amount,” he said.
Researchers behind a study President Trump cited as the source of that figure have since said the President badly misunderstood their figures, and other researchers have backed them up.
“If we continue on a business as usual trajectory, global temperature increase will exceed 5 degrees by the end of this century,” Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW, Associate Professor Katrin Meissner said.
“The difference is therefore not two-tenths of one degree, but over 3.5 degrees.”
Professor Carlson said the Paris agreement was intended to create a framework for more ambitious to emissions reduction agreements, a fact President Trump appeared to recognise in his speech.
“These agreements only tend to become more and more ambitious over time. In other words, the Paris framework is just a starting point, as bad as it is,” Mr Trump said.
On that, at least, Professor Carlson could agree.
“The Paris agreement is the first major step toward cutting emissions, not the last. It puts us on a path to stabilise emissions, but we will need to do more,” she said.
Without America’s support, that burden will now fall to the broader international community.
