Trump Is Getting Us Out of the Paris Climate Accords Again

Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP

For the second time, President Trump will withdraw the United States from the absurd Paris Climate Accords. Technically, the United States was never actually legally a part of the Paris Climate Accords because the Senate never legally ratified it.

Advertisement

The United Nations describes it as “a legally binding international treaty on climate change,” and it also meets the definition of a treaty under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which states that a treaty is “an international agreement concluded between [two or more] States in written form and governed by international law.”

Under Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the president is granted the power to make treaties, but only “with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” This means any treaty negotiated by the executive branch must be ratified by the U.S. Senate with a two-thirds majority vote. 

However, the Paris Climate Treaty never went through this process. Barack Obama knew would not pass Senate scrutiny. So, in 2015, he simply pretended it wasn’t a treaty at all and bypassed the Senate, ratifying it unilaterally.

Trump promptly got us out of it after taking office in 2017. This decision was not only consistent with his America First agenda but also with a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Trump’s actions were a rejection of the overreach by Obama’s administration, which sought to bypass the constitutional treaty-making process for political gain.

Naturally, when Joe Biden assumed office in January 2021, one of his first moves was to re-enter the Paris Climate Treaty, attempting to restore the U.S. commitment to a flawed international accord.

Advertisement

The news nevertheless scandalized Politico.

President Donald Trump declared Monday that he will withdraw once again from the 2015 Paris climate agreement — instantly isolating the U.S. from the global campaign to stem catastrophic warming.

This time, Trump’s repudiation of the worldwide climate effort could bite deeper by taking effect more quickly and at a time when the new president has more far-right allies overseas and at home.

[...]

The long-promised exit, outlined in a White House press release less than 30 minutes after Trump took his oath of office, will jettison the United States’ Biden-era promise to cut climate pollution by up to 66 percent within a decade. It also calls into question a host of other U.S. commitments, such as providing billions of dollars in support to poorer nations suffering from unprecedented heat waves, floods and rising seas.

Trump’s action also raises the odds that, without U.S. leadership, the world will fall even further behind the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a threshold that could accelerate the pace of climate damage. The U.S. is the second-biggest source after China of the carbon pollution driving up global temperatures.

Advertisement

Cry me a river.

Trump promised in his inaugural address to get America energy independent again. "The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices, and that is why today, I will also declare A National Energy Emergency. We will drill baby, drill."

Article content

Trump continued, "America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have: the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth. And we are going to use it. Let me use it. We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world. We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it."

Recommended

Trending on PJ Media Videos

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Advertisement
Advertisement