Catastrophic climate change is more likely, Donald Trump has just made sure of that
Paul G. Harris says the US president has made what will be his most derided decision but it is based on economics, politics, ideology and psychology, and feeds his pathological need to be the centre of attention
This sounds like great progress, and is better than doing nothing, but this still puts China’s emissions at double those of the US. This level of pollution is a recipe for climate disaster. Nevertheless, that’s what climate “leadership” looks like in the world of Donald Trump.
Watch: ‘The US will withdraw from the Paris climate accord’
As for the Europeans, they are doing far more to transition away from fossil fuels. But they have never quite been able to be the climate leader that they have always wanted to be. That’s because they are not as much of a “union” on this topic as many might expect. Some EU states remain heavily reliant on fossil fuels. For their own economic interests, they have held back European leadership.
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What possessed President Trump to do this? Why hand the mantle of climate leadership to those countries he claimed during his schoolyard-bully election campaign to be big fat losers? We can’t read Trump’s mind, but the reasons for his decision can be discerned fairly easily even without reading his late-night tweets. It comes down to economics, politics, ideology and psychology.
But Trump’s pull-out will enable Big Oil to continue reaping enormous profits by keeping as many people and businesses as possible addicted to oil for as long as possible. Big Oil owns massive reserves in the ground that they want to get out and sell. Trump’s decision means they can do more of that before a future president stops them.
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Second, politics: Trump’s decision is just what the traditional business supporters of the Republican Party want. They have spent decades trying to slow down climate action in the US. This is just more of the same. More importantly, Trump is doing what he promised to do during his campaign.