How I became O.K. with Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement
By Rob Schuham, Co-Founder of COMMON and 17. Edited by Julia Dopp.
Like many of you, I was deeply saddened when our President pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement. While I wasn’t surprised, it still felt like a punch to the gut. His rationale was ill-informed and foolish.
I want to explore the notion of “foolish” in a slightly different context, however. Not necessarily for the reasons you might think. It was foolish as it relates to his administration’s agenda. Withdrawing from the Paris climate accord will ultimately backfire on his administration in ways that even our President’s outlandish imagination couldn’t…well…imagine. And some of those backfires will actually result in the U.S. meeting or perhaps exceeding the goals of the treaty.
Before articulating how we may decrease our CO2 emissions to levels below those outlined in the agreement, let’s first look at some of the obstacles the current U.S. administration has created for us in pulling out:
- Exiting the agreement means separating ourselves from every other country in the world, minus Syria and Nicaragua (the former of which is in the midst of a horrific civil war, and the latter of which felt that the agreement wasn’t far reaching enough)… so we’re making our seat…
