U.S. Doesn’t Need Trump to Honor Paris Climate Agreement
June 1, 2017
American cities have already spent billions of dollars on climate action and are committed to environmental goals that go beyond the Paris accord.
With or without President Donald Trump, the United States will work to address climate change. Not because of the Paris agreement, which is nonbinding. Not because backing out would earn the ire of the other 194 countries that have signed on to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
The U.S. will work to address climate change because it cares about environmental health and economic stability.
The Paris climate agreement, which went into effect in November, was an attempt to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius in this century—a level at which, science tells us, the impacts to the planetary ecosystem will be insurmountable. Though nonbinding, it allowed countries to set their own goals for reducing atmospheric-heating emissions, largely from the combustion of fossil fuels, and asked wealthy countries to chip in to help developing nations in their efforts. The agreement was met with praise worldwide, and the active role taken by President Obama put the U.S. in a place of climate leadership.
