Trump, China, and the Paris Climate Agreement

In a May 17th interview with Reuters, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee known simply as "the Donald" had quite a bit to say about the landmark climate agreement reached this past December in Paris, and he was so wrong about so much that I felt I had to say something.

Consider first Trump’s claim that he intends to renegotiate the Paris agreement: “I will be looking at that very, very seriously, and at a minimum I will be renegotiating those agreements, at a minimum. And at a maximum I may do something else.” “Something else,” we can only assume, means withdrawing from the agreement entirely.

The problem is that Trump is unlikely to be able to do any of this. Given that the process involved getting representatives of nearly 200 nations together in one place and took two weeks (not to mention months of planning), he certainly would not be able to convince the parties to the agreement to renegotiate it, and as Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin brought out in a recent article for the Washington Post, there is also a good chance that he would not be able to pull out of the agreement. This is so for two reasons: first, many countries--including the US and China--are currently making a concerted effort to ensure that the agreement goes into effect before President Obama leaves office next January, and second, no nation can pull out until at least three years after it goes into effect, and any withdrawals made then will take a year to go into effect. 

Unfortunately, Mooney and Eilperin also make clear, the agreement is weak enough that by itself the fact that the next president may well be unable to withdraw hardly guarantees that the US under a President Trump would take meaningful climate action. Even if bound by the Paris agreement as it stands, a President Trump could (among other things) still nix President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a crucial part of the US’s emissions reduction strategy.  He could also abandon attempts to secure funding for the Green Climate Fund, an international mechanism meant to help poor countries reduce their emissions and take steps to protect themselves from the myriad adverse effects of climate change. Mooney and Eilperin suggest that, aside from international censure, this sort of thing would not result in any penalties for a Trump administration.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Also noteworthy are Trump’s claims that the agreement is “one-sided” and that he does not believe China will adhere to the emissions reduction pledge it made ahead of Paris (its so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contribution or INDC). The implication here is clearly that China is not pulling its weight. 

There are several problems with these claims.

First, it is not clear what if any reason there is supposed to be to doubt that China will fulfill its pledge to the international community. According to this analysis, China is on track to meet the goals set out in its INDC. And as Joe Romm over at Climate Progress was quick to point out, China in fact appears to be ahead of the game, with its emissions now apparently having plateaued a full fifteen years ahead of schedule!

All of this is possible because, Trump’s indication to the contrary notwithstanding, China is actually doing a ton to fight climate change. To mention just a few things the country is up to, China

• Plans to launch a nationwide cap and trade program in 2017 (source); 
• Is rapidly expanding nuclear power generation capacity (source); 
• Is expected to derive 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 (source); 
• Aims to decrease coal consumption by 160 million tonnes in the next five years (source); and 
• Is currently constructing a nationwide network of high-voltage, direct current power lines (source), a move that, the authors of this study found, would allow the US to reduce its emissions to 80% below 1990 levels if implemented here.

And as for whether or not China is pulling its weight, a couple of points are worth making.

First, the Climate Action Tracker, “an independent scientific analysis produced by four research organisations tracking climate action and global efforts towards the globally agreed aim of holding warming below 2°C,” ranks China ahead of the US on climate action! (See the chart on the left on this page.)  I argued as much myself here.

Moreover, if any country is not pulling its weight, it is the US. For one thing, the US’s INDC is much less ambitious than it ought to be, as I argued here. And to make matters worse, one recent analysis found that currently the US is not even on track to achieve the relatively modest emissions reduction goals laid out in its INDC!

Together with his long history of climate change denial, the utter obliviousness to all this Trump displayed in this interview with Reuters suggests suggest that a Trump presidency would be very bad news for the climate. But hey--at least he’s not as bad as hemorrhoids!

UPDATE (5/27/16):  Yesterday Trump made a speech about energy and the environment, and it was even worse than I had expected.  He made clear his intentions not just to back out of the Paris agreement--which, as I've indicated, he may well be unable to do--abut also to do two terrible things that--I also said--he actually could do and that I expressed concern about:  nix the Clean Power Plan and end adaptation funding for vulnerable communities across the globe.  And as if this weren't enough, he also espoused a whole bunch of other really bad ideas I won't bother to get into.  If you're interested, you can read more about it and watch the whole thing here.

I might also mention that, while doing research for this related blog post, I came across this UN page showing progress toward ratification of the Paris agreement.  If you're as worried about what might happen with US climate policy if Trump becomes president as I am, you'll find this helpful.