Editorial: Trump exit from Paris Agreement shameful
At least President Donald Trump did not deny the reality of man-made climate change in his announcement Thursday that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, Indeed, in declaring that he would be willing to "begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction," he implicitly acknowledged that the goals of the agreement are valid.
That's not an inconsequential acknowledgment for a president who has questioned the scientific consensus on the rate and danger of global warming. But it hardly minimizes the devastating impacts of his decision.
Trump's theme was that the problem with Paris is not its objective but its design. The agreement, he said, is "a bad deal" for U.S. workers and gives unfair advantages to, notably, China and India, who would be given more time and, in India's case, money to meet the accord's terms.
What the president did not acknowledge, unfortunately, is that withdrawing from the Paris Agreement also is a bad deal for American workers and citizens in general. Situating America in the rarefied air of Syria and Nicaragua as the only three countries that will not adhere to the agreement's terms, Trump's decision has done the opposite of what he claimed. How, one wonders, will the United States - in Trump's phrase - "remain the world's leader on environmental issues" when it is taking a completely different direction from the other 193 nations it would aim to lead.
No, by all accounts, the new leader on climate change will be China. And without the United States to help police China's compliance with the Paris Agreement, that critically important economic competitor could be in a position both to influence the steps other nations take while disguising its own actions - ironically certifying the very economic advantage the president seeks to blunt.
In his announcement, President Trump said, "We will ... see if we can make a deal that's fair. And if we can, that's great. And if we can't, that's fine." That cavalier assessment vastly understates the crisis confronting the entire planet. If we can't make a deal that meets Trump's qualifications for "fairness," there will be consequences. It is, to be sure, a moral failing to cite simple self-interest as justification to withdraw from an effort to manage a global crisis. But it is also not even in our self-interest, since Americans will face the same environmental costs and calamities of climate change as the citizens of every nation on Earth.
Trump's shameful retreat from the worldwide effort to contend with the results of a changing climate diminishes America's stature in the world and weakens a fight in which every nation has a stake. But at least he at last has recognized the fight targets a real phenomenon. For the foreseeable future, sadly, it looks like we'll have to work with that.