Hug your children a little tighter after reading this. When President Trump announced the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord on Thursday, that’s exactly what I did with my 4-year-old daughter. She and her future children — everyone’s future children — have their work cut out for them.
Trump treated this announcement like he’s still on The Apprentice, complete with a boardroom meeting in the Rose Garden before declaring his termination of the agreement. His abhorrent decision is brimming with hubris and has me fuming. The office of the President of the United States is not a reality show, no matter how much Trump wants it to be. And a note to Republicans: Just because President Obama did something doesn’t automatically mean it should be undone — with celebratory chest thumping. Would you like to bring Osama bin Laden back from the dead, too?
This is not a political issue affecting only Americans, like picking a Supreme Court nominee or whether Planned Parenthood should be funded. In fact, it’s not political at all. I reject the notion that climate change is a partisan issue. It *should* concern all Americans and indeed all humans. There are no winners in this decision. Trump threw a party as if this were something to be celebrated. But the United States as a country lost. Trump has lost his authority to speak with an international voice. As CNN’s Fareed Zakaria said, “[T]his will be the day that the United States resigned as the leader of the free world.”
The reactions are thus because the stage is global and the stakes are as large as it gets.
For the uninitiated, the Paris agreement is the culmination of 23 years of negotiating that began with 197 countries signing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, according to the Washington Post. It marked a global effort to combat climate. There were no targets for emission reductions but guidelines were drawn.
The first act of this convention was the Kyoto Protocol, which put the onus for reducing emissions on the developed countries believed to have contributed the most to climate change. Kyoto was laid out in 1997 and took effect in 2005. The second and final Kyoto commitment period ends in 2020. Paris is separate from Kyoto but still run by the UNFCCC.
As the New York Times explains, what made Paris more appealing than its predecessor is that the Paris deal is meant to be nonbinding, allowing individual countries to customize their plans to fit their domestic circumstances and alter them as needed. Also, there are no penalties for missing declared targets. There’s no finger-pointing or blaming, as Kyoto appeared to have. It’s just the entire planet meeting with each country agreeing to do what they can. The idea is the global community will use peer pressure and diplomacy to strengthen policies.
The end goal is to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, or even 1.5 degrees Celsius to provide margin of error. A rise of more than 2 degrees would pass a point of no return, with consequences including “unpredictable superstorms and crippling heat waves.” The U.S. pledged to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 as well as to commit up to $3 billion in aid ($1 billion has already been given) for poorer countries by 2020, according to the Times link.
According to the Post link, Paris was written specifically with the U.S. in mind. It was negotiated and written in December 2015. Then-President Obama gave the United Nations written confirmation of the United States’ intention to join on Aug. 29, 2016. Enough countries signed on for it be ratified on Nov. 4, 2016, four days before Trump’s election victory. Paris officially begins Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the next presidential election.
There are 197 countries on the planet. All but two — Nicaragua and Syria — signed on to Paris. And Nicaragua has an asterisk — it doesn’t think Paris goes far enough with its voluntary pledges and a lack of punishment for not adhering to the standards. Which means Trump can be mentioned in the same breath as Bashar al-Assad.
Paris is so important to the planet’s future that even Big Oil companies urged Trump to stay in. This includes former Exxon CEO and current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Of course, there were plenty in Trump’s cabinet who wanted out.
Trump can withdraw from Paris on his own, because Obama entered into Paris on his own. He didn’t submit the matter to Congress for approval. But the international blowback is already massive, with the rest of the planet interpreting Trump’s move as a “drop dead” message. Other countries are already fighting back. The BBC says a document being drafted by China and the European Union “will be seen as a rebuff to the U.S.”
Analysis done before Trump even took office suggests Paris can survive without the United States. But for how long? How many other countries will look at the U.S. and say, “If they’re not in this, why should we be?” How many innovators and jobs will the U.S. lose to recruitments from Canada, China, India, Britain and the European Union, just to name a few.
The United States as a nation might pull out of Paris, but Americans are still very much committed. Three governors and more than 80 mayors (yes, the mayor of Pittsburgh is one), including Cincinnati mayor John Cranley, have delivered a middle finger right back at Trump, declaring their commitment to Paris.
Here’s just one reason Paris is so important:
Stephen Hawking estimates humans have 100 years to find a new planet or become extinct, a sharp downgrade from his 1,000-year projection made last November. Climate change is one of the reasons Hawking cites, but there are others, among them nuclear war, artificial intelligence and population growth. In his new BBC Series, “Expedition New Earth,” Hawking explores if and how humans could travel to live on a different planet, according to EcoWatch.
And humans aren’t the only species affected by climate change:
Plastic waste has become such a problem that other species are literally choking on it. This video shows a snake in India vomiting up a whole empty plastic bottle after attempting to eat it. Wildlife rescuer Goutham Bhagat told the Daily Mail he’s not sure why the snake would have swallowed it.
On the positive side:
Small farms are on the rise. According to EcoWatch, family-run farms produce more than 75 percent of the world’s food. And about the same number of all farms worldwide are smaller than one hectare, or roughly the size of a city block. Here in the U.S., only about 1 percent of Americans are farmers, according to EcoWatch. But the majority only feed themselves and families.
Oakland’s public school district is saving money, reducing its carbon footprint and serving as a model for other schools on how to eat healthy and locally.
“Food is often completely ignored as a climate solution,” said Kari Hamerschlag, lead author of a report detailing the program’s success, in the link.
In 2009, the district launched Farm to School, a program bringing foods from local, organic farms to its cafeterias. There’s a vegetarian menu once a week, and on other days, meat usage is cut by 30 percent. Through a grant offered by the state of California, students can take field trips to the local farms and take cooking classes. Hamerschlag’s report found during a two-year period, the district reduced its carbon footprint by 14 percent, its water use by nearly 6 percent and saved the district $42,000, or about 1 percent of its food budget, according to the link.
Finally, a tip:
Recycling is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint. Recycle as much as you can, but avoid these pitfalls that can make life difficult for those running the recycling centers.
Peirce's Progressive Points 