Any rational, responsible business leader, faced with an existential threat to his enterprise, would take steps to manage the risk. With his decision to leave the Paris climate accord, President Donald Trump is putting the lie to one of his central claims: that he would run the country like a business.

The 2015 Paris agreement established a global target for lowering greenhouse-gas emissions -- aimed at keeping the atmosphere from warming by 2 degrees Celsius. Nearly all the world’s countries agreed to create a system to measure their progress, and to continually strengthen their efforts. By backing out, the US not only diminishes its own influence in these vital diplomatic negotiations, but worse, grants other countries license to neglect their responsibility.

In explaining his decision to leave the Paris accord, Trump said it would cost the US millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in lost gross domestic product over the next decade. In truth, America’s burgeoning solar and wind power industries are creating jobs.

Under Trump, the US has already become an irresponsible role model. The administration is working to dismantle former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which is meant to regulate electricity plants and help the US meet its promise to cut emissions by more than a quarter from 2005 levels. That is more than one-fifth of the total emissions reductions promised in the entire Paris agreement.

Thankfully, as cities, states and businesses take action -- and as coal is increasingly priced out of the energy market -- emissions in the US are falling steadily (though not as much as they would with the Clean Power Plan). And India and China are likely to reduce global carbon emissions by 2 to 3 billion tons more than they’d anticipated just last year.

Now more than ever, cities, states and private companies will need to redouble their own efforts, to demonstrate to the world that Trump’s action does not reflect the views of most Americans and to ensure that the US is ready to rejoin the global effort to prevent climate change at the first opportunity.


(Bloomberg)