There is no doubt that President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord will make it more difficult for the world to reach the goals that it set for itself in the agreement - keeping global temperature rises well under 2C. But whatever one says about the pullout – Trump says staying in the accord would hurt American jobs and businesses - and the bemoaning of a departure from America’s historic global leadership role, Trump was simply being consistent with what he campaigned on last year and has been driving toward for the last five months. While the withdrawal is a blow to global efforts to combat climate change, it is nothing less than a fulfillment of a campaign promise.
What Trump did is what skeptics spent last year and this year insisting he’d never do. But that would not be his fault.
This is not just about how Trump views climate change but of the Republican Party and the conservative movement which has adopted rock-solid consensus against any serious action aimed at the US reducing carbon emissions. This has become a bedrock belief of the GOP. The party simply does not believe climate change is a serious problem and that addressing climate change shouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the president’s agenda. This is the consensus that the vast majority of the Republican Party has arrived at. Which makes it the crucial context for Trump’s decision.
It’s not just the Republicans who do not put a premium on climate change. Many people simply do not view climate change as imperative. They may accept the scientific consensus that global warming is real and fueled by humans. But they never demand that those in power, in or out of America, put climate action at the top of the to-do list.
Consider that roughly a third of both Trump supporters in the presidential primary and Republican voters overall believe global warming is “caused mostly by human activity” and express worry about it. Yet they did not break from their party or their presidential candidate.
This has long been the problem environmental activists have: their inability to galvanize the public around climate change. Most people don’t live near glaciers that melt or along coastlines in which tides are noticeably rising. Global warming’s most dramatic effects — from desertification to failing crops — will be felt years, not weeks or months, in the future. In a world in which many crises compete for our attention daily, climate change often loses out. Without immediate signs of catastrophe, political urgency is difficult to muster.
The hypocrisy is that suddenly climate control became an issue when Trump carried out what he said he would do.
The Paris agreement, struck among 195 countries in 2015, is voluntary. Participating countries determine their own targets and their own policies. They can, at any time, revise those targets and policies without penalty. That’s what non-binding means. There are no threatened penalties, and thus the US is free, within the agreement, to implement whatever policies it wants.
By itself, the abandonment of Paris won’t immediately affect day-to-day lives. Many scientists say the climate accord’s goals are too modest to limit global temperature increases to 3.6 degrees, and that to do so, global carbon emissions will have to reach net zero by the end of the century, a giant task. So even with the full participation of the US, the Paris agreement wasn’t nearly enough on its own to avoid the very worst of global warming.
Trump’s critics believe he has put America on a dangerous, isolationist path, ceding its leadership position. But Trump fulfilled the mandate of his supporters. It was a promise to his constituents kept. In the end, he cannot be blamed for staying true to himself.
