Trump Victory Deals Blow to Global Fight Against Climate Change http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-09/trump-victory-seen-undermining-u-s-lead-on-pollution-fight
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Next U.S. president has said climate change is a hoax
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Focus on talks in Morocco aimed at implementing Paris deal
The global fight against climate change will suffer a blow from Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, threatening the industries working to clean up pollution from fossil fuel.
The next president has questioned the science of climate change, vowed to withdraw from the Paris agreement on global warming and pledged to stimulate production of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. Green campaigners and policymakers, some of whom are gathered this week in Morocco for talks on implementing the Paris deal, sounded the alarm over the upheaval they expect when Trump takes office in January.
“The presidency of Donald Trump relegates the West as we knew it to the realm of the past,” Reinhard Butikofer and Monica Frassoni, co-chairs of the European Green Party, said in a statement. “If Donald Trump pursues the foreign policies that he announced during his campaign, this will severely undermine trans-Atlantic relations, the international rule of law and world peace.”
Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. rescued a two-decade-old process the United Nations promoted to rein in pollution damaging the climate, forging the Paris deal last year. Along with China and more than 190 other countries, the accord set out a framework for all nations to cut emissions. Trump has said he will cancel that work.“This is a very bad outcome,” Tom Steyer, founder of San Francisco-based advocacy group NextGen Climate Action, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “The Paris accord was a historic attempt to move forward as a globe to deal with a global problem, with American leadership. If he follows through on his campaign statements, that would be a devastating mistake.”
Delegates at COP22 react to Trump win
May Boeve, executive director of the anti-fossil-fuel campaign group 350.org, said in a statement that “Trump will try and slam the brakes on climate action. Our work becomes much harder now, but it’s not impossible, and we refuse to give up.”
It would be difficult for Trump to pull out of the Paris accord, which is part of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the U.S. ratified under Republican President George H.W. Bush. Trump would have to renounce the 1992 treaty or risk bringing down the entire UN process to scrap Paris. He’d have to give three years of notice to withdraw legally.
“If the U.S. pulls out of this process and is seen as going as a rogue nation on climate change, that will have implications for everything else on President Trump’s agenda when he wants to deal with foreign leaders,” Alden Meyer, who has been following the UN talks for more than two decades, said at the organization’s annual gathering in Marrakech on Wednesday. “I think he will soon come to understand that.”Doubts about U.S. support for the accord may stall progress in talks in Morocco this week and next, since other nations wouldn’t trust that any commitments the U.S. made will stick after Trump takes office. The U.S. is the richest among the top six polluting nations, and its support for the deal is essential to keep China and other developing economies working for cleaner industry.French Environment Minister Segolene Royal expressed concern about Trump’s stance in a posting on Twitter, noting that Obama “ratified and committed” the U.S. to the Paris agreement and there should be “no withdrawal,” adding, “Let’s stay vigilant for climate.”
