CAC Climate Blog #2

On June, 1st 2017, President Donald Trump announced that he was pulling the United States, the second largest greenhouse gas polluter on earth after China, out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

This move came only a year and a half after, for the first time, nearly every nation on earth came to a unanimous agreement on the reality of a changing climate. In December 2015, after weeks of intense negotiation, countries committed to help solve the problem by signing the Paris accord. All nations on this planet (except Syria because it is currently in a civil war and Nicaragua because the deal didn’t go far enough) agreed to a clear target: keep the global average temperature from rising 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, as compared to rising temperatures during the 19th century before the industrial revolution.

The agreement recognized the prevailing climate scientific consensus: that after a 2 degree Celsius rise in temperature, we risk dramatic changes in weather patterns, food and water crises and an overall more hostile world. Currently, if fossil fuel use stays the same and we do nothing to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, we could warm the planet up to 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century.

Trump’s main reason for leaving the accord was because he said it was “a bad deal,” for the US. The Paris accord, however, was not “a deal” in the way Trump uses the phrase. The agreement did not mandate any nation to abide by a specific negotiated obligation. The agreement states that the 2-degree goal would be achieved by cutting emissions “as soon as possible” based on a country’s specific reduction targets. The agreement doesn’t detail exactly how countries should reach its national targets. Rather, it provides a framework for gaining momentum on greenhouse gas reduction. This means that every government involved in the Paris talks had the option of deciding how much it would reduce its own emissions, based on what it thought it could deliver. So no one actually got a bad deal, because everyone defined their own terms.

At this point, 197 countries (which equal 98.9% of global emissions) already have submitted their national climate targets, which they want to pursue to bring down their emissions. The US—a country with just over 4 percent of the world’s population, but responsible for almost a third of the excess carbon dioxide that is heating the planet—agreed to lower emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. In context, this is a fairly moderate reduction as compared to other Global North nations. The European Union pledged, as a group of 28 countries, to cut emissions by 40%. The United State’s main tools to achieve its promised reduction were Obama era climate policies such as the Clean Power Plan and stricter fuel emissions standards. These policies are not only aimed at accelerating the current pace of electricity de-carbonization (reducing the emissions of electricity generated) and implementing green energy, but also reducing health-damaging ambient particle pollution (mainly due to fuel combustion from cars and power plants) and ozone.

First of all, let’s be clear on what a withdrawal means: President Trump announced his intention to withdraw via the accord’s formal process—which cannot begin until 3 years after the Agreement entered into force: meaning November 2019. Also, the Trump administration plans to follow the accord’s formal withdrawal mechanism, a long legal process that will take at least a year to carry out. The official exit of the US from the agreement will not come until around November 2020—coincidentally coinciding with the next presidential election. It should also be noted that a future administration could always rejoin.

This doesn’t mean that the Trump administration can’t do damage in the interim. President Trump’s decision to leave the agreement is the most significant in that it’s a clear signal of the direction in which he plans to take federal environmental and energy policy. He will keep trying to dismantle climate-friendly policies, including the Clean Power Plan, which sought to curtail emissions from power plants, and various regulations on methane leaks from oil and gas operations. Whether or not he’ll be successful is still far from assured, since it will take years to carry out a process of withdrawing and revising science-based regulations. This process will also possibly be affected by a slew of legal challenges by cities, states, and environmental groups.  Nevertheless, it is likely that coal, oil, and gas will have less regulatory oversight than current levels. A recent analysis suggests that if Trump’s plans go forward, emissions will still fall between 15 to 19 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 as opposed to the 26-28 percent the U.S. aspired to in the Paris talks due to market forces.

Additionally, experts see another impact of the Trump presidency and withdrawal from the accord: his favoring of fossil fuels over green energy will likely have repercussions on US businesses. U.S. businesses may miss out on the booming clean energy marketplace worldwide that the Paris Agreement is accelerating. For example, China is already investing more than double than the US in clean energy and its carbon emissions have stayed flat or declined for the past 3 years. India and Europe, which, have a booming solar and wind industry and are on an irreversible path toward green development. These are the future world leaders in green energy, not the United States. 

For many of us, this is all understandably very distressing. But there is a reason for optimism.

As President Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt bury their heads deeper and deeper into the sand, local efforts to stop climate change are intensifying. States like California and New York—whose combined economies comprise the fourth largest economy on earth—have vowed to pursue their own power plant and vehicle emission reduction programs. Even red states like Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota or Texas get it: the largest percentage of these state’s power is from wind energy. And the private sector is already shifting toward cleaner and more cost-efficient energies regardless of the federal government’s political stances. And just last month, Philadelphia among more than 250 US cities pledged to run entirely on renewable sources such as wind and solar energy by 2035.

As such, green energy employment opportunities are growing rapidly. Jobs in the green energy sector are already growing 12 times faster than the overall US economy. Here in Pennsylvania, the number of clean-energy jobs is up 15% in just two years. Now more than 66,000 workers are employed in the renewable energy sector—about twice as many PA workers in mining, oil and gas combined. Nationally, there are 1.2 million green energy jobs in states that voted for Trump already (out of 2.6 million across the US). 

However, to keep this trend up, it is important that local lawmakers keep expanding and renewing green policies. Elected officials need to hear from their constituents. Just recently, over 11,000 comments were submitted to the PA Department of Environmental Protection in support of natural gas pollution standards. Join the chorus of voices who support green energy, cleaner air, and healthier communities. Call, send a letter, or send an email to your elected official and demand action on climate change.