Drumpf dumps...

Trump pulls U.S. out of Paris Accord on climate change

By Carolyn Lochhead

President Trump said Thursday he will withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord, a move that shifts the primary focus of U.S. action on climate to California and other like-minded states.

Trump’s made the decision despite intense personal pleas from European leaders and American corporate chieftains, including Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook of California. He said leaving the Paris Accord would save jobs in the United States, especially the coal industry.

“In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate Accord but begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris Accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States. ... So we’re getting out, and we will see if we can negotiate a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine.”

Trump’s action fulfills a campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris Accord, an agreement by 195 nations to submit to voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The effort was led by then President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping.

While the U.S. has not ratified the agreement, the Obama administration had agreed to abide by it, promising a 28 to 36 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Scientists said Trump’s move could have grave consequences for the planet, making it less likely that the world will avoid the 3.6 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperatures used as a benchmark for dangerous and irreversible climate change.

Much hangs on whether the rest of the world, as well as California, New York and other states, along with a host of U.S. cities and hundreds of major corporations, work to offset the federal government’s relaxation of carbon reductions. Some analysts believe there is no substitute for federal action, while others contend that the solar, wind and other renewable technologies have already radically altered the energy sector and there is no turning back.

“States can do some of the job, but not all of it,” said Dan Reicher, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University. “The federal government’s budget for clean energy vastly outstrips anything we can realistically expect states to come up with. From a technological standpoint, the federal government is a difficult player to replace.”

But Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and director of its Atmosphere and Energy Program, said the transition to clean energy is already under way and cannot be stopped because wind and solar are now substantially cheaper than fossil fuels, as well as infinitely cleaner. Jacobson also pointed to the other states, the 28 U.S. cities, and businesses that have committed to 100 percent renewable energy.

“One person in the U.S. has a lot of power,” Jacobson said. “But people have a lot of power in the world. Cities have power. States have power. Companies have power to motivate changes.”

Gov. Jerry Brown is headed to China this week to attend an international climate summit. He is scheduled to visit Chengdu, Nanjing and Beijing to push climate and clean-energy policies. Brown said Trump’s decision to exit the Paris accord would galvanize California to intensify its effort to combat climate change, already the most aggressive in the country, but acknowledged that the state needs partners.

Leaving Paris “is a very big deal,” Brown told The Chronicle on Wednesday. “It’s imperative that other parts of America take action. We can’t take action alone.”

In leaving the accord, Trump had strong support from the coal industry and 20 Republican senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who sent a letter to him urging withdrawal.

The United States is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind China, and has by far the largest share of accumulated total emissions. A U.S. exit from the accord will take at least three years to execute and put it in the company of just two other nations that have rejected the agreement, war-torn Syria and Nicaragua, which held out for a stronger agreement.

Analysts widely predicted that Trump’s move would have profound and long-lasting diplomatic repercussions. Europe and China announced new collaborations on climate and some foreign ministers suggested there could be economic retaliation, possibly in the form of a carbon tax on U.S. goods.

John Holdren, Obama’s former science adviser, said in an interview that Trump will also face headwinds from the American public, which is increasingly seeing evidence of climate change all around them. Holdren said there is still a chance that the world can hold temperatures to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but that there is no longer any room for delay.

The fault with the Paris Accord, he said is that it should have happened in 1990.

“We knew everything in 1990 that was needed to justify the kinds of measures that the world finally took in 2015,” Holdren said. “We lost a quarter of a century, in substantial part because of people sowing false doubt about the reality of climate change. The very notion that you could add the quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere that we had been adding and we continue to add without drastic effects on climate a perversely wrong notion.”

As a result of the delay, Holdren said the emissions targets have become much more drastic.

To have even a 50 percent chance of meeting the 3.6 degree target he said, worldwide emissions must fall roughly by half from their 2000 level by 2050, and then reach net zero by 2100.

“That’s an enormous challenge, technologically,” Holdren said. “I think it can be met, but it can only be met with a commitment of all the world's major emitters, and no further delay. We cannot afford further delay.”