Trump's Paris moves reflect policy disruption risks
The White House has followed through on its pledge to "exit" the landmark climate accord in defiance of its critics
President Donald Trump announced yesterday in Washington that the United States will withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement to head off "future intrusions" on the country's sovereignty and limit US exposure to "massive legal liability". The Trump administration's repudiation of the pact's 'no backsliding' framework for global climate governance has been met with near-universal condemnation from other world leaders. The United States is the planet's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the previous administration promised to transfer funding and clean energy technology as part of Washington's contribution to climate-vulnerable countries.
What next
US withdrawal will prove primarily an act of political theatre with symbolic impact on the global climate regime, as the technical exit process will not occur for some time and all US commitments were voluntary and slated for reversal prior to the decision. Most US corporations and many economically significant sub-national jurisdictions will continue to promote green technology and the shift to natural gas and renewable energy, as the White House cannot promise anything beyond a temporary abatement of regulatory tightening that is widely accepted to be forthcoming once the adverse impact of climate change is felt.
Subsidiary Impacts
- A tightening US labour market will provide statistical cover for the Trump administration's job creation claims for now.
- Alignment of the loose Paris vision with more pressing national energy and anti-pollution goals will keep developing countries on-side.
- EU countries, particularly Germany, are likelier candidates for taking over the US role as provider of funding and technology than China.
Analysis
The White House advanced several claims about the financial and regulatory burdens the Paris Agreement would have on the United States, arguing that it:
- undermined US firms' competitiveness, citing the work of a pro-deregulation consultancy;
- diverted taxpayer dollars to a "UN climate slush fund" -- the Green Climate Fund -- from domestic spending priorities (see INTERNATIONAL: New GCF strategy to unlock frozen funds - April 7, 2016); and
- was badly negotiated by the administration of former President Barack Obama (see UNITED STATES: Trump will take unilateral action - December 29, 2016).
This marked a revival of core themes from Trump's presidential campaign -- the negative agenda of rolling back policy accomplishments by his predecessor, deregulation of the US energy industry, a zero-sum view of multilateral international agreements and climate change denialism (see INT/US: Trump backsliding will loom over Bonn talks - May 5, 2017).
The administration also claimed that the national contributions countries have pledged would only slow the global temperature rise by 0.2 degrees centigrade, misrepresenting the findings a 2016 study conducted by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The study's authors claim that the White House was citing an older study published in 2014, well before most countries formulated their Paris pledges ahead of the COP21 conference.
2.7-3.6 degrees
Global warming by 2100 with current Paris contributions, prior to US backsliding
The research projected that the national commitments made under the Paris Agreement would hold warming down to 2.7-3.6 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels 2100, compared to 3.3-4.7 degrees in the baseline scenario without international coordination on climate issues.
International impact
The COP21 negotiations that produced the Paris Agreement focused on achieving an international consensus on basic principles that sank the 2009 Copenhagen talks and delayed the thornier issues of technical implementation for future discussions (see INTERNATIONAL: Paris agreement backsliding is likely - December 15, 2015).
Most of the substance of US backsliding under the Trump administration was already underway prior to the announcement, with the White House joining with a Republican Congress and conservative state governments in efforts to defang federal environmental regulators, abandon Obama-era measures aimed at emissions reduction and block US contributions to the Green Climate Fund (see UNITED STATES: Markets will trump energy policy - November 15, 2016) and (see UNITED STATES: Courts will slow energy deregulation - May 10, 2017).
Trump's high-profile announcement repackages old policy shifts already underway and facing obstacles
The main political achievement of the Paris Agreement was its comprehensive membership, not the scale of discrete national commitments or the degree to which this process is institutionalised at the international level (see PROSPECTS 2017: Climate governance - November 18, 2016).
US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement now, after its entry into force last year, probably does not have the same impact on the international politics of climate change that a failure to achieve a basic consensus because of Washington at the negotiation stage would have had in 2015.
Rather than mirror Washington's exit -- which will not take formal effect until November 2020 under the terms of the agreement -- policymakers voicing opposition to the climate accord in other countries, such as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, will simply argue in favour of a gradualist approach to their governments taking national-level policy shifts, regulation and emission reductions while holding the overall framework intact.
White House dynamics
The Trump presidency appears in its early months to have taken a personalistic and uncoordinated approach to policymaking, detached from the input and expertise from other branches of government or the federal bureaucracy.
Policy outcomes seem driven by contending groups of conservative advisers with individual agendas within the White House, who have different ideological and professional backgrounds, seeking presidential support, which often proves temporary and erratic issue-to-issue (see UNITED STATES: Pence will seek to shape policy agenda - January 24, 2017).
As president, Trump has reportedly not engaged personally in detailed policy debates or political coalition-building and this has hindered his ability to push priorities through the US policymaking apparatus in the face of opposition from the bureaucracy, the courts and Congress (see UNITED STATES: AHCA debacle will hinder Trump’s plans - March 27, 2017) and (see UNITED STATES: Trump will deprioritise banking reform - May 15, 2017).
Those favouring continued US participation, such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and presidential family members advising Trump, had other policy priorities that the Paris Agreement could facilitate in a smaller way, such as creating a business-friendly regulatory and tax environment or not antagonising foreign governments with a belligerent tone.
This reflected the views of large US corporations, including the non-coal energy sector, which considered the Paris Agreement a stable and non-disruptive framework for gradual shifts in climate policy as the effects of global warming become more apparent.
Factionalism will continue to drive erratic policymaking in Trump's White House
The main officials pushing for a high-profile withdrawal -- albeit for different reasons -- were reportedly EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a former anti-regulation attorney general from oil-producing Oklahoma, and senior presidential adviser Steve Bannon, who has pushed Trump to withdraw from international institutions considered to infringe on US sovereignty.
The more moderate corporate grouping has dominated White House positions on trade, tax and fiscal policy in recent months over the objections of the more radical nationalist wing, which has also been foiled on national security matters by advisers promoting more orthodox foreign policy, such as National Security Advisor HR McMaster and Secretary of Defense James Mattis (see UNITED STATES: Trump will undercut McMaster at NSC - February 22, 2017).
The Paris decision may reflect the president's desire to reassert his personal authority and return to the free-wheeling style of campaigning after devolving many substantive policy decisions to his subordinates and backtracking on unrealistic campaign promises.
Political considerations
This elite-centric level for analysing the Paris withdrawal decision is the most appropriate, compared to examining the influence of public opinion, civil society or the international political context, as the views of the US electorate on energy and environmental regulation are highly polarised along partisan lines and diverge sharply on specific policy measures.
A May 2017 Pew Research Center study (pdf) found that a majority of respondents (53%) considered using government policy to protect the environment from the negative effects of energy development to be a "top priority".
However, this figure dropped to 32% among Republican respondents, with the issues of reducing dependence on imported energy sources and job creation ranking higher as policy priorities, meaning that Trump is playing to his core supporters by antagonising core opponents in a high-profile announcement, rather than new policy accomplishments (see UNITED STATES: Coal symbolism will shape energy policy - November 22, 2016).
