President Trump Against The World - Essay Example

 President Trump Against The World Leaving the Paris Agreement & What That Means for America United States President Donald J. Trump, known as a highly controversial public figure, has announced that as part of his administrations foreign policy he has elected to pull the United States out of a climate change treaty, the Paris Agreement. This has not helped his overall popularity rating, but many will argue that this policy decision is in keeping with President Trump’s campaign promises. Some agree with the decision, commonly supporters of President Trump and the Republican platform; whom have a history of favoring interests regarding the advancement of businesses and revenue, over environmental concerns. However, based on the literature published since President Trump’s decision to pull-out of the Paris Agreement, the global consensus is that it is a bad idea, but one should decide for one’s self about whether the move was a good one or a bad one for Americans. One way to decide if the United States should have stayed in the Paris Treaty is to weigh the pros and cons of pulling out. One can look at the decision in terms of winners and losers, and both exist on both sides of the argument. President Trump claims that his decision to pull-out of the Paris Treaty will benefit Americans, but as is his usual tactic, the president only mentions one area where the benefit will take place, jobs-an important benefit of course. Economists are divided whether this will benefit American job, and if it does will, the jobs be short or long-term. The American industry sector that is mentioned most often in conjunction with the Paris Treaty is coal. While on the campaign trail, Mr. Trump consistently insisted that he would withdraw from the Paris Treaty so that coal mines would reopen and coal miners could go back to work. If one agrees that it was the Paris Treaty that caused the decline of the coal industry in the United States, then they would count the withdrawal from it as a win. However, the coal industry has been declining for years; the Paris Treaty has only been in place for one year. The winners on the jobs front will be those places where investments in research and development in renewable energy is occurring. President Trump’s withdrawal from the treaty may seem like a victory for coal but it is not. The United States’ jobs market loses in the withdrawal, although many individual states have economies that are highly invested in renewable energy, and they will continue to work toward solutions and adaptation to global climate change. Those states’ economies will be winners while President Trump and his economic allies will cling to the fossil fuels, until those resources have been depleted. Since President Trump controls the federal investments in renewable energy, that makes the United States a loser. The retreat from the Paris Treaty may look good and it certainly won Mr. Trump electoral votes, if not many of his earned popular votes, but it will not bring back long-term jobs. (Rott, 2017). An important fact is even coal companies lobbied against President Trump’s pull-out from the Paris Treaty. The reason coal companies joined in the numerous other industries urging President Trump to stay in the Paris Treaty is that the leaders of the coal industry thought that it would give them an international podium from which they could advocate for coal in the scheme of world energy sources. Now that the industry has learned to capture and store carbon emissions for cleaner extraction, they also need funding to do that (Rott, 2017). None of that will happen now, and the coal jobs are not likely to come back either. “The industry is in a long-term decline as it faces competition from cheaper natural gas and — increasingly — wind and solar. Some utilities are also responding to customer demand for renewable power, and the policies of any one administration have little impact on those decisions” (Rott, 2017). Automation has also taken jobs from the coal industry and it is not likely to recover in terms of jobs for humans. The coal industry is a loser regardless of the Paris Treaty, and citing the coal industry as the reason for the pull-out is arguably disingenuous. Jobs and the economy are the reasons most of Mr. Trump’s voters cite for their decision to vote for him; however, Mr. Trump’s reference to policies like the Paris Treaty as job killers are in fact false. While President Trump says his withdrawal from the Paris Treaty is about jobs and his decision should be viewed as an economic win for the United States, there is no proof that pulling out will create jobs. Timothy Cama and Devin Henry of The Hill say, “A recent report commissioned by the oil industry-backed American Council for Capital Formation found that the [Paris Treaty] would eliminate $3 trillion in GDP and 6.5 million jobs by 2040. A Heritage Foundation article, published last year, didn’t go quite as far, but it predicted that the agreement would prevent 400,000 jobs and cause a GDP loss of $2.5 trillion” (Cama, 2017). These, of course, are both regarding as leading conservative publications. Other sources claim different statistics about the Paris Treaty and jobs. Strong evidence that withdrawing from the Paris Treaty will hurt the United States economy and that jobs will actually be lost exists and our competitors are already jumping at the chance to use this as a PR tactic against the United States. As previously stated, even some corporations involved in extracting fossil fuels are against the pull-out of the Paris Treaty. Zack Coleman and Karl Mathiesen of Climate Diplomacy mention corporate players such as Cloud Peak Energy, a coal company, and ExxonMobil, who both argued that exiting Paris would mean relinquishing “a chance to steer global climate and energy trends in ways that would benefit industries and regions undergoing a tough transition as the world reduces its carbon dependency” (Coleman, 2017). In other words, even some corporations who are based in the fossil fuel industry have seen the writing on the wall and want to find ways to transition to renewable energy sources in the future. They see the Paris Treaty as a viable set of guidelines for doing that. If the United States is no longer part of it, there are no incentives for the American fossil fuel industry to change. They are losers in the withdrawal along with all of the people in the world who would benefit from a quicker transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Many sources of analysis besides those funded by the fossil fuel industry and/or conservatives see the Paris Treaty as a job creator. Cama and Henry point out, “The International Renewable Energy Agency estimated recently that the pact would make the world $19 trillion richer by 2050. The Department of Energy says 3 million Americans worked in clean energy last year, a number that would be threatened by a Paris pullout” (Cama, 2017). In other words, the jobs that President Trump says are being lost because of the Paris Treaty are really being gained. In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, U.N. Environment chief Erik Solheim says, “[The Paris Treaty is] a great job creator in the United States itself. There is now 400,000 jobs in solar and wind. There is a little bit - about 50,000 jobs in coal” (Solheim, 2017). The dominance, over the rest of the world, in clean energies like wind, solar and carbon capture technologies related to the fossil fuel industry that the United States currently enjoys will soon disappear. Countries like China and those in Europe who are still part of the Paris Treaty will take over the lead now. China has already said they will do so, and German’s Chancellor Angela Merkle has stated that the United States under President Trump is not longer in the position to lead the world in a positive direction. So, in job creation or even preservation, President Trump’s actions have resulted in America being the loser on the job front and other countries being winners in policies direction and job-creating technologies. A whole new industry of renewable energy has been created as a result of the fears of that catastrophic global climate change will occur. Quinn Schiermeier and Jeff Tollefson of Scientific American interviewed several experts who mainly disagree with President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Treaty. Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, says, “The biggest loser from the decision could be the United States itself. Why? Because while the Paris agreement is a climate treaty, a triumph for evidence-based decision-making, it’s also much more: a trade agreement, an investment blueprint, and a strong incentive for innovation in the energy and the economy of the future” (Schiermeier, 2017). Hayhoe goes on to mention Ernst & Young who listed it most attractive market for renewable energies as China, then India, followed by the United States in third place. With no concerns over greenhouse gas emissions or investments in renewable energies, the U.S. economy is bound to take a big hit thanks to the President Trump pull-out. The opinion that the withdrawal from the Paris Treaty will create jobs is mistaken; it will do the opposite and it will also set research on renewable energies back many years from lack of public funding. The rest of the world will be moving ahead to the future of renewable sources of power while the United States will stay behind mired in its own love of fossil fuels and the money that President Trump and his allies have made from it. Those who think the withdrawal from the Paris Treaty was a good idea also cite what they call the lack of proof that global climate change is even occurring. Investor’s Business Daily a financial advice company with a website, but no author courageous enough to make the claims that the website makes with his/her name attached, says, “Is human-produced CO2 the cause? The proof is thin, and relies heavily on more than 70 mathematical models…And the temperature data themselves are compromised. They have been fudged so many times by pro-global warming scientists…The most reliable temperature data, which come from satellites, show unequivocally no warming since 1998” (Investors Business Daily, 2017). Based on this small minority opinion about global warming, one reason to pull-out of the Paris Treaty is that there is no climate change occurring. Of course, Investor’s Business Daily does not cite the “sources” of their assertions because they are either cherry-picked or nonexistent. Those who invest in coal and other types of industries that are considered to be major sources of harmful greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming see a benefit in the United States pulling out of the Paris Treaty, but the scientist who fear the withdrawal will hasten the end of the world as we know it, see it as a major setback in years of progress on global climate change policy. Some claim the regulations that the Paris Treaty placed on emissions were too stringent, but Robert Falkner of International Policy explains, “The Paris Agreement promises a more realistic path towards globally coordinated emissions reductions, mainly because it has managed to better align international climate policy with the realities of international climate politics” (2017) In terms of climate policy though, the Trump administration already rolled back the bulk of the limitations on emissions and other issues, so the retreat from the commitment the United States made to be leaders in the reduction of global emissions (only fair since they were one of the leader in causing them) was really only symbolic. While President Trump and his few allies claim victory, they are losers in the area of critical thinking and evidence-based action. Unfortunately, the United States and the rest of the world lose because of the “alternative facts” this group chooses to back with their vast amounts of wealth. President Trump’s retreat from the Paris Treaty symbolizes his power and not much more. So, perhaps in that way, President Trump is a winner because he has demonstrated how little business focused people, such as him, care about the affects environmental changes have on the poor people of the world as it is they who will suffer most from global climate change. They are the ultimate losers. Many opponents to this policy argue that President Trump and his allies will be able to wall themselves into climate controlled mansions while the poor of the world will suffer slow deaths in the heat, drought, floods and other catastrophic weather events; which will be much more frequent once the global temperature rises past the point of no return—meaning no hope for not having a major climate change all over the planet. The Paris Treaty was a way that world leaders had hoped to stave that off until 2060 or beyond, which would give the world some time to prepare and adapt. Without the efforts of the United States, the catastrophic weather events could happen much sooner making everybody except those wealthy enough to fend off the effects of global climate change until the very end the only winners. In the end, they will lose too though because they will not be able to survive on Earth. The withdrawal from the Paris Treaty also affects the way the rest of the world views the United States. Thankfully, the rest of the world may have some sympathy for the people of the United States. They may understand what happened in the 2016 election and are, like the majority of Americans, waiting out the four years until a more environmentally-focused person is elected, or unless President Trump is impeached. One way some of the other countries in the world regard President Trump’s withdrawal may be to copy his other policy actions. While they may not pull-out from the Paris treaty, they may follow President Trump’s example in slashing all of the progressive regulations that aim to curb dangerous emissions and control other forms of pollution. Brad Plumer of the New York Times says, “With the world’s second-largest emitter pulling out, other countries may feel less pressure to step up their own plans to curb greenhouse gases” (Plumer, 2017). Of course, the other way some countries could react, according to Luke Kemp, who Plume cites, is in the completely opposite way from the United States. Kemp thinks that other countries may galvanize their efforts to reduce emissions. If that is the case, once again, the United States will be on the outside looking in, losers in this area, while the rest of the world may be able to achieve their goals without the United States’ help, but if the U.S. continues to pollute without regard for the state of the global climate, everybody loses. Some critics of the Paris Treaty object to it strictly on form. They believe that it was unconstitutional in the first place. David French of the National Review says. “It’s important to note that effective treaties bind not just the United States but all the signatories. Nonbinding pacts like the Paris Agreement, by contrast, are easily fractured and easily exploited” (French, 2017). Put another way, French believes that the other countries who signed the treaty, and that is all of them except for Nicaragua and Syria (even North Korea and Iran), would not follow through on their promises either. The United States, French believes, is just more honest and straightforward about its intentions not to uphold the elements of the treaty. French believes that if the United States had stayed in the Paris Treaty, they would be losers because they would have held up their commitments while other countries did not, but that is not true. The United States had already fell far short of its goals and pulling out is not going to make the United States look any more credible, just like big losers. President Trump’s retreat really makes no difference anyway because he had already ended progressive climate regulations in favor of business. Susan Matthews of Slate says, “Regardless of whether we pull out. [Trump]’s already rolled back the policies that would ensure we might make our commitment to Paris, so effectively, he’s stepped out of the accord before officially doing so. It is much better if we, as a nation, are honest about our fickle lack of commitment to these norms than if we stay in and drag down the entire process” (Matthews, 2017). In that respect, the winner may be the other countries of the world who remain in the Paris Treaty and the loser the United States. The winners include businesses that do not care about how much they contribute to global climate change. One of the reasons that many are worried over the pull-out from the Paris Treaty is the diplomatic consequences on top of the environmental ones. The repercussions that the United States will feel because of the withdrawal include the European Union, China and other countries withholding their cooperation in other international matters. Other countries could impose carbon tariffs on the goods they import from the United States, leaving the U.S. behind in trade. The United States also becomes a loser in foreign policy because they will no longer be considered trustworthy or willing to follow through on their commitments. The result will be that the United States becomes more isolationist and less involved in world affairs. For a country who has spent the past eight decades trying to exert its world dominance as a moral, economic and military leader, this will be a completely different type of image to have. Many American will not find the decline in respect to be a positive thing and they will not like that the reputation—real or imagined—that the leaders of the United States have spent great sums of money and effort to project has now changed to one of derision and mockery. So here are how the tallies stack up in the win/lose columns for the big Paris Treaty withdrawal that President Trump flaunted as a big win for the United States in terms of jobs: Winner Loser Jobs lost Other Countries U.S. Jobs created Other Countries U.S. Investments Other Countries U.S. Innovation Other Countries U.S. Science Other Countries U.S. Trade Other Countries U.S. Diplomacy No one U.S. Reputation Other Countries U.S. Environment No one Everyone Emissions No one Everyone Even if pulling out of the treaty creates more jobs, it does so many other negative things that it is it still remains a bad policy decision for the United States and the world, and there is no evidence that it will create or save any jobs. Certainly, those who are believers in fossil fuels and those who are somehow still climate change deniers feel as if they have won some sort of victory, but it must feel hollow considering all of the other losses that come along with it. The one hope that the United States has now is to wait out this administration’s disastrous policy and hope that the next administration rejoins the Paris Treaty and before it is not too late to for the United States to remain the global policy leader. References Cama, T., & Henry, D. (2017, June 1). Trump pulls US out of Paris deal: What it would mean. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from The Hill: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/335842- trump-pulls-us-out-of-paris-deal-what-it-would-mean Coleman, Z., & Mathiesen, K. (2017, June 2). Donald Trump’s US leaves Paris climate agreement. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from Climate Diplomacy: https://www.climate- diplomacy.org/news/donald-trump%E2%80%99s-us-leaves-paris-climate-agreement Falkner, R. (2016). The Paris Agreement and the new logic of international climate politics. International Policy, 92(5), 1-24. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/538a0f32e4b0e9ab915750a1/t/57d3dfc646c3c43b07 9d1c59/1473503175245/Falkner_2016_TheParisAgreement.pdf French, D. (2017, June 1). Trump Defends the Constitution and the Economy by Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448201/paris-agreement-trump-right-pull-out Investors Business Daily. (2017, June 1). By Leaving Paris Climate-Change Deal, Trump Will Do U.S. Economy A 'Yuuuge' Favor. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from Investor's Business Daily: http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/by-leaving-paris-climate-change-deal-trump- will-do-u-s-economy-a-yuuuge-favor/ Matthews, S. (2017, May 31). The World Is Better Off if We Leave the Paris Agreement. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/05/america_doesn_t_des erve_the_paris_agreement.html Plumer, B. (2017, June 1). What to Expect as U.S. Leaves Paris Climate Accord. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/us-paris-accord- what-happens-next.html Rott, N., Joyce, C., Kelemen, M., Horsley, S., & Ludden, J. (2017, June 1). 5 Changes That Could Come From Leaving The Paris Climate Deal. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from NPR: http://www.npr.org/2017/06/01/531056661/5-things-that-could-change-when-the-u-s- leaves-the-paris-climate-deal Schiermeier, Q., & Tollefson, J. (2017, June 2). Leaving the Paris Climate Agreement. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-scientists- reacted-to-the-u-s-leaving-the-paris-climate-agreement/ Solheim, E. (2017, May 31). U.N. Official Says Pulling Out Of Paris Climate Deal Will Cost Jobs. Morning Edition. (S. Inskeep, Interviewer) NPR. Retrieved June 23, 2017, from http://www.npr.org/2017/05/31/530843651/u-n-official-says-pulling-out-of-paris-climate- deal-will-cost-jobs Read More