By: Nina Turnbull
On the 5th of November, the United States began the official process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, a decision taken by President Donald Trump in 2017, which will see the US removed from this treaty on the day after the US 2020 election. While this move has received international condemnation from prominent world leaders, it remains necessary to consider the fundamental impact that US withdrawal will have on the Paris Agreement’s mission: to prevent the extreme rise of global temperatures. Although the Trump administration can be accused for shirking its responsibility to fight climate change, considering the real impact of the Paris Agreement is important when determining the extent to which this move will be a disaster for international climate policy.
The Paris Climate Agreement, or COP21, was a culmination of international interests to replace and improve the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. The Agreement was adopted in December 2015, a product of weeks of negotiations, and officially came into force the following November when it was initially signed by 197 countries. The central aim of the Agreement was to slow climate change by committing to the prevention of the rise of global temperatures by more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (by 2100), with the aim of restricting this increase to only 1.5 degrees if possible. This was to be achieved through Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) of ratifying countries. Countries were invited to design programmes to mitigate climate change which were conducive to the needs and resources of their domestic situation. Apart from the parameters of five-year reviews, commencing in 2023, and the provisioning of funding to aid developing countries’ mitigation efforts, this allowed nations to establish individual goals. Now that we are nearing half a decade of the Agreement, it is possible to make some judgements about its success. Aside from being a huge feat in international diplomacy, perhaps the biggest achievement of the Agreement has been positioning climate change as one of the central issues of the decade, raising unilateral awareness of its risks such that it has filtered down from the political sphere into that of grassroots campaigning—one only need look at the recent sensationalisation around 16 year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg and rise of the international ‘Extinction Rebellion’ movement to see this. On a more practical level however, the prevention of global heating and reduction of greenhouse emissions seems to have failed somewhat.
The reality of climate change over the past five years is a picture of slowly increasing global emissions and temperatures. In 2018, the European Union announced that all member states had fallen behind reaching their self-defined targets. Although countries like Sweden and Portugal had reached 77% and 66% of their 2020 targets by 2018 respectively, at the other end of the spectrum, other countries have experienced an increase in emissions over the past five years. This is the case for the US, whose emissions increased by 3.4% to 2018 while larger scientific studies have indicated an overall increase in global temperature, with 2019 currently on course to be one of the top three warmest years compared with the 20th century average. Unfortunately, it is precisely what makes the Paris Agreement so unilaterally ‘successful’ that has stalled its progress. The INDC scheme, for all its merit in allowing adaptability and inclusion, has two main pitfalls: the scope it offers for the construction of unambitious policy and lack of effective enforcement mechanisms. While the issue of lacking accountability is more clear, in that the UN has no legal premise from which to penalise countries that fail to meet targets, the question of unambitious policy deserves more exploration. A 2016 study by MIT argued that even the initial target of the Paris Agreement was not adequate for mitigating climate change and its possible effects. While the Agreement, the study found, could reduce temperature by 1.1 degrees Celsius compared to a no-change scenario, the provisions in place will likely still see warming of 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. Given that a 2 degree increase would result in extensive flooding in low-lying coastal regions, this sombre prediction sheds light on the ineffectiveness of the Agreement from its inception.
With this in mind, it is interesting to turn to why the US withdrawal from the Agreement has been so controversial. Practically, the abandonment of the Agreement does not prevent America’s engagement in future climate discussions, but it does prohibit them from any decision-making processes in these debates. Nevertheless, President Trump has received condemnation for this decision both domestically and further afield. On the domestic side, Trump’s withdrawal, and wider attitude to climate matters, has become a central issue in the 2020 presidential campaign, with Democrats widely condemning the decision and vowing to re-ratify the Agreement if Trump loses the presidency next November. Indeed, polls have also suggested that the majority of American citizens believe America should stay in the Agreement—77% based on a poll in 2017. In a global view, Trump’s decision has been criticised by the French President, Emmanuel Macron, and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, while similar comments have been made by the European Commission and World Resources Institute, amongst others. Overall, the theme of these criticisms seems to focus on the dangerous precedent the American withdrawal establishes for similar exits, rather than a consideration of the practical implications to climate mitigation this change may incur.
Perhaps the real root of concern is for the possibility of an ‘unrestrained’ United States, and the potential detriment this may have to global ecology. While claiming his decision was to prevent increased costs for the American individual, hypothesising that sticking to the mitigation agreement would cost the US $3bn in lost economic output and 6.5 million jobs, it is undeniable that this stems from his fundamental belief in the value of carbon—in the form of coal, gas, and oil—to the US, as well as the prioritisation of this economic value over the future of the planet. Trump has already been exposed as a climate change denier in a 2016 interview with the New York Times and seems to see no danger linked to the uncontrolled use of fossil fuels, which his administration supports. The US already contributes around 15% of global carbon dioxide emissions, without even the basic accountability set in place by the Paris Agreement’s five year reviews, there is scope for Trump to see this soar.
The issue with America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, then, centres not on the effectiveness of this programme, but rather the capacity of Donald Trump without its limits.
Resources used:
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/11/04/trump-begins-formal-us-withdrawal-paris-agreement/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50297029
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Paris-Agreement-2015
https://www.ecojesuit.com/the-paris-agreement-successes-disappointments-and-the-road-ahead/9078/ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/13/paris-climate-deal-cop-diplomacy-developing-united-nations
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/11/ideology-behind-donald-trumps-paris-withdrawal/601462/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%2fworld%2f2019%2f11%2f06%2fwhat-trumps-climate-surrender-means-world%2f%3f