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One pledge our new president has chiseled in stone is that when he first set foot in the Oval Office, he would rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, from which President Trump’s 2019 withdrawal became final on Election Day 2020: “Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement,” Mr. Biden tweeted. “And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it.”
If we use the old saying illustrated above, we would assume that when President Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, there was some aspect of good that we were overlooking, Did he? Lets investigate the pros and cons to the American citizen.
Before getting into a debate about the pros and cons of the Paris climate agreement, it’s important to understand what the accord really does.
The Paris climate agreement is an initiative run by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to help reduce global warming. The goal is to keep the Earth’s temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius by curbing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions allowed by each participating nation.
Before going to the meat and potatoes of this article, I feel I must digress to make the reader aware of a prime example of manipulation of facts by the media. In point 4, of Pros side. The last sentence portrays an increase in clean energy jobs from Michigan that was largest in the Midwest. If you follow the link from that line, you will find as an after thought in the original article that renewable energy jobs actually decreased in the country overall during that period of time. Unbelievable the manipulation of the facts.
Pros
1.The world has shown record-breaking support for the Paris Agreement: In December 2015, the Paris Agreement was adopted by nearly every country on Earth, and it has broken records along the way: The adoption of the agreement was the largest meeting of world leaders in one place; the signing of the agreement saw the most signatures to an international agreement on a single day in history (175!); and the agreement entered into force in record time – only 11 months from adoption, to signing, to ratification and entry into force.
2. The U.S. has been a leader in climate action. It can’t give that up now: The United States is the world’s biggest economy (and one of the biggest contributors to climate change), but it has also been one of the strongest advocates for climate action. The U.S. accounts for about 1/7thof the world’s total emissions, but that outsized impact means U.S. climate action also has an outsized influence on our global climate as well. In 2016, global emissions flat-lined for the third year in a row even as the global economy grew, due in large part because the world’s two largest economies – the U.S. and China – cut their emissions while still growing their economies.
3. Climate action could produce $26 trillion globally in economic benefits. We are vastly underestimating the economic benefits of climate action, according to a recent report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. Transitioning to a low carbon economy could generate $26 trillion globally in economic benefits through to 2030. The report looked across five sectors: energy, cities, food and land use, water, and industry. Ambitious action across all these areas could deliver net gains compared with business-as-usual.
4.The Paris Agreement can create 24 million new jobs. According to a report by the International Labor Organization (ILO), action on the Paris Agreement can create 24 million new jobs by 2030 with the right policies to promote a sustainable and just economy in place. The job opportunities generated by states in the U.S. Climate Alliance, a group of 25 governors dedicated to meeting the targets of the Paris Agreement, set a clear example. Michigan, which joined the alliance in February 2019, boasts over 120,000 clean energy jobs and saw the largest clean energy job growth in the midwest from 2017 to 2018.*
*While the percentage of renewable energy jobs decreased at the national level in 2018, jobs in this sector grew by nearly 3 percent in the Midwest.
Cons
Submitted by Jsykes@atr.org on Friday, May 26th, 2017
Below are the top five reasons the U.S. should withdraw.
- Cost to U.S. taxpayers. The direct cost to U.S. taxpayers of the Paris Climate Treaty and GCF is very high since former President Obama unilaterally pledged to give $3 billion dollars to the fund and has already sent hundreds of millions abroad.
- Increased energy costs for U.S. consumers and businesses. If the Paris Climate Treaty moves forward, as does the accompanying regulations proffered under Obama, American consumers will see costs skyrocket. The costs of combined measures such as the Clean Power Plan and CAFE standards would amount to the same as a $30 per ton carbon tax, or $20 billion in annual costs. Household electricity costs are projected to increase up to 20%, and an average family of four would see total income loss of over $20,000.
- Puts U.S. at a competitive disadvantage. This agreement will cost the U.S. an estimated 6.5 million jobs by 2040 and reduce GDP by over $2.5 trillion, putting the country at a huge disadvantage to countries like China, India, or Russia. Also, these countries, which are signers of the agreement, are allowed to increase or have no cap on their emissions of greenhouse gases. For instance China has asserted its emissions will “peak” around 2030 putting the U.S. economy at a severe economic disadvantage in the interim and moving forward.
- Paris Climate Treaty will have negligible benefits to the environment. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which compiled the combined impacts of the various pledges under the Treaty, it found a global temperature reduction of 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100.
- The Paris Agreement is a Treaty and needs to be ratified by Senate. Since the Paris Agreement is a signed agreement between 195 countries for a similar goal it can be defined as a treaty and should be subject to a vote by the U.S. Senate. This is stated in Article 2, Section 2 of the United States Constitution where it says, “He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties.”
See the next three opinion pieces
Heritage Senior Advisor- Mike Howell wrote “The Paris agreement was—and always has been—a sham. And it’s an expensive sham for Americans, projected to cost 400,000 jobs, an average income loss of more than $20,000 for families of four, and a $2.5 trillion hit to the nation’s gross domestic product.”
In an article from USA Today penned by John Barassa on Nov 5th,2019 writes “The poorly negotiated Paris climate accord imposed unfair, unworkable and unrealistic targets on the United States for reducing carbon emissions. As the climate deal punished America’s energy producers with expensive and burdensome regulations, it gave other countries U.S. taxpayer-funded subsidies and generous timelines.”
And lastly Submitted by Jsykes@atr.org on Friday, May 31st, 2017
The Paris Agreement was a product of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, where former President Obama met with world leaders to commit the U.S. to non-binding emission reduction targets. Under the agreement, Obama committed the U.S. to wholly improbable reduction goals of 26 to 28 percent by year 2025.
Through a litany of regulations stemming from the agreement, Obama essentially offered up the U.S. economy as a sacrificial lamb to further his own legacy. The agreement however would not just have hurt the country’s growth as a whole, but would have trickled down to low-and-middle income Americans. If the U.S.’s participation in the agreement had been allowed to move forward, energy costs would have skyrocketed, in turn raising the cost of utility bills for families and increasing the costs of consumer goods.
A recent study by the Heritage Foundation projected that the Paris agreement and resulting policies would have increased electricity costs for a family of four between 13 and 20 percent annually. The study also projected American families would see over $20,000 of lost income by year 2035. Such regressive policy hits the nation’s most vulnerable hardest, who ironically are the same people Obama used to justify the deal.
The Paris debacle was also slated to reduce U.S. GDP by over $2.5 trillion, and result in an average shortfall of nearly 400,000 jobs by 2035. Of the 400,000 jobs lost, an estimated 200,000 would have been in the manufacturing sector. Meaning Americans would also have seen the costs of consumer goods such as electronics, paper products, and apparel increase, inevitably taking more out of household income.
With such drastic costs to the U.S., American’s would expect an equally drastic benefit on the other end, yet that is simply not the case. Policies such as those resulting from climate deal would, even with a complete elimination of U.S. carbon emissions, result in less than two-tenths of a degree Celsius reduction in global temperatures.
It is all to clear the Paris climate deal was all cost and no benefit for the U.S., and unlike the Obama Administration, which was all to comfortable sacrificing low-and-middle income Americans, along with thousands of jobs and GDP.
It appears there is no baby to be saved in this scenario, just more undoing anything the previous administration accomplished. Go to americancitizenshandbook.com , click on your state and contact your Senator s and Congressmen and let your voice be heard. Otherwise, we as American Citizens will be the one paying for it all. For the sake of the country please share this where ever you can.
Thank you for the conversation, God bless and stay safe.