- Ted Cruz: President Trump should fulfill his campaign promise and withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change
- The treaty drives up energy prices, devastates our industrial base and bolsters our rivals, writes Cruz
“Ted Cruz represents Texas in the United States Senate. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.
(CNN)Following a successful international tour and the G-7 Summit in Italy, President Trump has an opportunity to relieve our nation of the unfair and economically devastating requirements of the Paris Agreement, the United Nations climate treaty he pledged to rip up during the campaign.
And as soon as possible, President Trump should act on — and keep — his campaign promise.
Ted Cruz
The agreement, signed by the Obama administration last year, would commit the United States to drastically reducing its carbon emissions while allowing some countries to increase theirs. This, all while doing nothing to meaningfully decrease global temperatures.
According to a recent National Economic Research Associates Economic Consulting study, the Paris Agreement could obliterate $3 trillion of GDP, 6.5 million industrial sector jobs and $7,000 in per capita household income from the American economy by 2040. Meeting the 2025 emissions reduction target alone could subtract $250 billion from our GDP and eliminate 2.7 million jobs. The cement, iron and steel, and petroleum refining industries could see their production cut by 21% 19%, and 11% respectively.
Not only would these unfair standards reduce American job growth and wages and increase monthly utility costs for hardworking families, they would fundamentally disadvantage the United States in the global economy. The result: our economic output would lag while other countries continued to expand their GDPs.
EPA removes climate change info from website 01:25
The agreement’s proponents market it as a panacea for addressing the impacts of climate change, but at its core, it is about increasing government control — over the economy, the energy sector and nearly every aspect of our daily lives. It represents the exact misguided, top-down, government-knows-best approach that American voters resoundingly rejected in 2016.
We cannot pursue a path that puts American workers first if we cripple a fossil fuel energy sector that generates 82% of the energy consumed in the United States. The coal industry alone supplies almost one-third of America’s electric power — with an increasing amount of clean coal-burning technology becoming available.
