Cheers and jeers continue over the U.S. taking steps to formally withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
The process of pulling out of the Paris climate accord will take about a year. Nonetheless, Climate Depot‘s Marc Morano – a skeptic of catastrophic man-made global warming – says President Donald Trump is following up on his pledge in 2017 to withdraw the United States from the U.N. Paris agreement.
“It is probably one of the most significant, signature policy moves of the entire Trump administration,” Morano argues, “because it affects domestic policy in terms of our energy production and regulation, and it affects international policy.”
It was for these and other reasons that President Trump said in June 2017 that the Paris climate agreement was a bad deal:
“The Paris Climate Accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers – who I love – and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.”
In a November 4, 2019 blog, Elizabeth Gore of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) said Trump has officially turned his back on climate.
“It’s a stunning surrender in the face of a threat that will cost us trillions, damage our national security, and destabilize our children’s future,” Gore wrote. “As my colleague Nathaniel Keohane said, President Trump is ‘walking away from American leadership on one of the most pressing crises of our time.'”
Morano, however, differs, arguing that it shows Trump is a strong leader – one who is willing to stand up to the international community.
“It turns the 2020 election into a referendum on the U.N. Paris climate pact as well as the Green New Deal,” he continues. “So, if Trump is reelected, we’re out of the U.N. Paris agreement – [and] if Trump is not re-elected and a Democrat wins, we are back in.”
