Trump reportedly will pull out of Paris Climate Accord

Via the Hill – President Trump will pull the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement, according to several reports Wednesday.

Axios first reported that Trump is working with a group led by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt on the exact mechanism of pulling out before announcing his final decision. CBS News also reported that Trump is telling allies about his decision.

The move marks a dramatic departure from the Obama administration, which was instrumental in crafting the deal. It also makes the U.S. an outlier among the world’s nations, nearly all of whom support the climate change accord.

But Trump’s decision fulfills an original campaign promise he made just over a year ago to “cancel” the accord.

Trump tweeted on Wednesday that he “will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days.”

Trump had been telling close confidants about his decision in recent weeks, Axios reported. But a public letter sent to him last week by 22 Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), helped seal his decision.

The agreement was reached by nearly 200 countries in 2015, the first global climate accord to include that many nations. Each country made its own non-binding pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Obama administration, which helped negotiate the pact, had promised a 26 to 28 percent cut in the country’s emissions, a pledge that Republicans had slammed as necessitating expensive, job-killing regulations.

Trump, who doubts the science behind climate change, has already begun the process of reversing American climate policies.

In March, he signed an executive order to undo most of Obama’s climate agenda, including a key rule to cut electricity sector carbon emissions, and he has proposed gutting funding to federal agencies that tackle climate change, renewable energy and the environment.

He delayed a decision on the Paris deal until after last week’s Group of Seven (G7) summit in Italy, where foreign leaders pressured him to stay in the agreement.

The White House said Trump was considering the leaders’ opinions on the agreement, but others, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, characterized the summit more as a six-on-one debate over the merits of the deal, with Trump standing alone.

His decision to leave the deal comes after scores of stakeholders asked Trump to keep the U.S. in the agreement, including businesses, environmentalists, major energy companies, Democrats, a handful of congressional Republicans and some officials in his administration.

Numerous companies and individuals aligned with Trump on other policies have publicly pushed him recently to remain in the agreement, including Exxon Mobil and Cloud Peak Energy. They argued the U.S. needs to stay involved in climate work to have influence over global policy decisions that could impact their bottom lines.

Full report here


OFFICIAL SAYS TRUMP EXPECTED TO PULL US FROM PARIS DEAL

BY JULIE PACE

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is expected to pull the United States from a landmark global climate agreement, a White House official said Wednesday, though there could be “caveats in the language” announcing a withdrawal, leaving open the possibility that his decision isn’t final.

Exiting the deal would be certain to anger allies that spent years negotiating the accord to reduce carbon emissions.

The official insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the decision before the official announcement.

AP Report here

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May 31, 2017 7:23 am

In spite of all the mocking, name calling and media assaults directed at President Trump and the smug self-righteousness of the other G7 “leaders” President Trump is the only leader of G7 and one of a few internationally who has figured out the CAGW swindle and called the bluff. He deserves great credit for this no matter what.

Griff
Reply to  andrewpattullo
May 31, 2017 7:38 am

So, why have the other 6 not figured that out?

TA
Reply to  Griff
May 31, 2017 8:22 am

Griff, they may have reasons to want to believe CAGW is real. It fits right in with their political agenda.

Reply to  Griff
May 31, 2017 8:32 am

Maybe it is because, lIke many who follow the global warming dogma they have their beliefs handed to them and don’t bother to examine the evidence and decide for themselves, but I can’t pretend to know how they decided what they believe. I only know what the evidence shows us. Mild global warming has happened in fits and starts the past 150 years or so at similar rates before and after industrialization could have played any role, and there is no direct evidence human activity and especially CO2 emissions have been the main driver. There is a mountain of evidence that climate models, on which most dire predictions are based, are hopelessly inaccurate. And to date the only important measurable effects of warming and rising CO2 are, in majority, positive. President Trump’s statements on this are the closest to the truth of all the G7 leaders.

hunter
Reply to  Griff
May 31, 2017 8:34 am

Nope. Obama signed it and as long as it just lays there a corrupt Judge, of which there are clearly many, can just use it as the existing Executive position and by means of using it justify a climate extremist demand impose it on the nation by a bench ruling. Paris is extremely dangerous. There is a very good chance a Judge will over rule the repudiation of Paris. We ate much more at risk at this time than you realize.

Latitude
Reply to  Griff
May 31, 2017 8:39 am

So, why have the other 6 not figured that out?
Because they all get paid Griff….including China
Truth is, it doesn’t matter any more…..wait and see how much money they cough up now….nada
…if any do, it will be China. Crippling their competition, of course, is in their favor.
…and the EU can’t float at all without our money

Mike the Morlock
Reply to  Griff
May 31, 2017 10:06 am

Griff May 31, 2017 at 7:38 am
Ah Griff The “G6” are not the rest of the world. As a matter of fact several of the Eastern European members are in rebellion
The Poles and Cech republic are of a group uniting against some of the commitments the EU expects of them.
Funny that Cechs and Poles not giving in to the Germans.
And the German let all their Panzers turn to rust while the Poles modernized their military.
michael 🙂
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/05/29/eu-climate-targets-undermined-polish-czech-revolt-documents-reveal/

Reply to  Griff
May 31, 2017 1:25 pm

I missed the opportunity in my original reply to Griff’s question to point out that it is actually a very good question and perhaps one of the most important ones to solve. Why do so many people, scientists, policy makers and politicians believe a theory and advocate such expensive disruptive change in human society when there is so little evidence in support and a considerable amount in opposition to the theory? A very complex problem with likely many threads to the answer. What we do know is it isn’t the first time and will not likely be the last where so much of the human collective cerebrum misfires.

Goldrider
Reply to  Griff
June 1, 2017 7:30 am

Please, somebody; give Griff the Red Pill. He’s been suffering these delusions long enough . . .

Bill P
May 31, 2017 7:24 am

As I see it the problem is how best to do this.
The Paris “Accord” states that a nation has to give 4 years notice to leave; clearly we do not want the USA following this idiocy for the next 4 years. If Trump simply announces a withdrawn he is admitting the USA bound by the “accord” and so is accepting that condition.
Better to do something more devious:
Say it is a treaty and has not been put through the correct approval process, hence the USA never adopted it. Trump can then ignore it or send it to Congress to reject.
or
Say it is not a treaty and hence it is not binding. So the USA does not need to withdraw, it just does not do anything in the accord.

hunter
Reply to  Bill P
May 31, 2017 8:19 am

Nope. Obama signed it and as long as it just lays there a corrupt Judge, of which there are clearly many, can just use it as the existing Executive position and by means of using it justify a climate extremist demand impose it on the nation by a bench ruling. Paris is extremely dangerous. There is a very good chance a Judge will over rule the repudiation of Paris. We ate much more at risk at this time than you realize.

Tom Halla
Reply to  Bill P
May 31, 2017 8:21 am

I mostly agree, Bill P. The exact legal status of foreign executive agreements has never gone to the Supreme Court, so proceeding on any plausible, defensible basis is a reasonable tactic.
If Trump decides to treat Paris as being on the same status as a domestic executive order, all he has to do is ignore it, and write policy that does not follow anything in the Paris accord. Thus far, eliminating the Clean Power Plan would seem to follow that approach.

Reply to  Bill P
May 31, 2017 9:22 am

We should leave the entire UN Climate Protocol less the monster live on.
It’s a win but I don’t see the Greenshirt crushing dagger in the process.
Get Dr. Lindzen the Metal of Freedom, denounce Soviet styled NWO climate for the right optics.

RP
Reply to  Bill P
May 31, 2017 2:34 pm

Bill P May 31, 2017 at 7:24 am

The Paris “Accord” states that a nation has to give 4 years notice to leave; clearly we do not want the USA following this idiocy for the next 4 years. If Trump simply announces a withdrawn he is admitting the USA bound by the “accord” and so is accepting that condition.

I don’t think so, Bill. The Paris agreement was never ratified by Congress so it was never a decision of the USA and has no standing in US, or international law. Therefore, it is outside the jurisdiction of US courts and international courts alike.
As far as I can see there is no legitimate authority on Earth that could constrain Pres. Trump not to withdraw the USA from the Paris agreement unilaterally and entirely on his own terms if he wants to. His administration did not sign up to the Paris agreement; Obama’s did and Obama would have needed the authority of an absolute ruler to commit the USA to it in perpetuity unconditionally and solely on his say so. It would set an unconstitutional, antidemocratic and absolutist precedent if the current President of the USA was to be held bound by the arbitrary, unratified decisions of a previous President. The US courts could not possibly rationalize upholding such an absurd precedent, no matter what Pres. Trump admitted or how corrupt the courts might be.

Hans-Georg
Reply to  RP
May 31, 2017 3:08 pm

10+

R. de Haan
May 31, 2017 7:28 am

The entire Paris Climate Treaty is based on a gigantic pack of lies. The sooner we leave this scam behind us the better.

Neo
May 31, 2017 7:43 am

Last week, Al Gore et al thought that they had boxed Trump in at the G-7 meeting, with comments of confidence that Trump would stay in bouncing about.
Trump has shown he will listen, but unlike most politicians who follow the advice of the last person they talked to, you can’t put words (or a decision) in his mouth.

TA
Reply to  Neo
May 31, 2017 8:25 am

“but unlike most politicians who follow the advice of the last person they talked to, you can’t put words (or a decision) in his mouth.”
Yes, Trump has a mind of his own. He doesn’t need others to form his opinions, he already has them.

Tom Judd
May 31, 2017 7:46 am

“It also makes the U.S. an outlier among the world’s nations, nearly all of whom support the climate change accord.”
The US has always been an outlier among the world’s nations. No other nation originated as a concept and, most importantly, with a declaration clearly stating that which government shall not do. Leadership is not conformity. Just as the US saved the world from itself 70 years ago, the US gets the honors of saving the world from itself, and its primitive passions, once again.
Leadership emerges from the most unlikely human beings, does it not?

TA
Reply to  Tom Judd
May 31, 2017 8:28 am

“Just as the US saved the world from itself 70 years ago, the US gets the honors of saving the world from itself, and its primitive passions, once again.”
Well put.

I Came I Saw I Left
May 31, 2017 7:48 am

“The move marks a dramatic departure from the Obama administration, which was instrumental in crafting the deal.”
I never hear anyone talk anymore about the fraudulent Carl 2015 paper that supposedly gave Obama the needed pretext to justify his signing the Paris accord.

Chrise
May 31, 2017 7:48 am

Remember this day, June 1st 2017. It’s the day the World started to awake from the illogical green-left nightmare of the CAGW scare. A hundred years from now the early 21st Century Climate Change debacle will surely be viewed with some mystification, alongside the Salem Witch trials, Alchemy and y2k.

hunter
Reply to  Chrise
May 31, 2017 8:15 am

You are very optimistic. I think it will be the day that we start to find out just how crazed the various threads of lefty hatred really are.

Reply to  hunter
May 31, 2017 9:26 am

Like Kathy Griffin’s mock Trump recapitalization;
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.usatoday.com/story/356840001/
That kind of hate?

Reply to  hunter
May 31, 2017 12:20 pm

Apple again, “decapitation”.

May 31, 2017 7:58 am

This is the smartest decision Trump has made yet.
Maybe he reads WUWT, or read AW’s open letter about climate change (Dear Mr. President)!!
Thanks Anthony!

Butch
May 31, 2017 8:04 am

Any country that abides by this “Accord” is committing economic suicide…I hope all of the socialist E.U. countries stick with it, just more jobs for us to Make America Great Again !! ..( I see a few more”Brexits” coming in the near future )

I Came I Saw I Left
Reply to  Butch
May 31, 2017 8:24 am

Apparently, western Europe loves suicide….

May 31, 2017 8:11 am

You know what I find odd about the Paris Climate Accord ? — check this for yourself — NEVER is the word “CO2” or “carbon dioxide” spelled out. I did a word check of the actual text, and neither of these words exists in the writing of this accord.
What you find is the word, “emissions”, which keeps the specifics hidden in the language of the accord’s directives.
You would think that an agreement of this magnitude would, at least once, mention the “greenhouse gas” that is most dominant in the supposed threats to the climate. But no, never, not once is this word mentioned.
… just the word, “emissions” and a deference to “proven science” — very obscured appeals to authority.
An open honest discussion about CO2, thus, appears to be above such an accord, which should cue you as to what this accord is really about.
It’s one big ol’ obfuscation.

TA
Reply to  Robert Kernodle
May 31, 2017 8:37 am

“You would think that an agreement of this magnitude would, at least once, mention the “greenhouse gas” that is most dominant in the supposed threats to the climate. But no, never, not once is this word mentioned.”
That’s a revelation to me. Thanks for the detective work.

Reply to  Robert Kernodle
May 31, 2017 10:01 am

My thanks, too, Robert.
That which is not said, can be more important than what is.
Watch the pea under the cup….
Robert’s observation is proof that Paris is a “junk science, traitorously clever political” accord.

Reply to  Robert Kernodle
May 31, 2017 10:19 am

Robert, once again, a great observation.
1. Does the word “carbon” exist in the text? I think it does in Article 5 at least twice.
2. What link to the text were you using?

Reply to  Stephen Rasey
May 31, 2017 12:01 pm

Here is a link I am using:
https://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/convention/application/pdf/english_paris_agreement.pdf
The word “carbon” appears only twice. in Article 5, para 2.

…and the role of conservation, sustainable
management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing
countries;
….while reaffirming the importance of incentivizing, as appropriate, non-carbon
benefits associated with such approaches.

“greenhouse gas” or “greenhouse gases” appear 15 times. I do not see a definition of greenhouse gases in the Agreement, nor any indication that different gases have different marginal contributions to “total greenhouse emissions” or climate change.
“climate change” is mentioned 32 times.

Reply to  Stephen Rasey
May 31, 2017 12:21 pm

P.S. For the true importance of this word count one must realize that “water vapor” is a most powerful greenhouse gas. The Paris Accord, as written, could be used to regulate source emissions of water vapor.

hunter
May 31, 2017 8:13 am

Now we see how hard the zombie climate true believers will really fight to establish their state religion. Frankly it doesn’t look that promising for skeptics. This may be more like attempts to stop the Catholic church from being the state religion after the Nicea process was undertaken by Constantine. His successor who attempted to roll back the power of the newly empowered Catholic church, was assassinated. We already gave a chilling set of examples that lefty/climate extremists will support threats and actual violence against Trump and any others who resist their irrational hysterical demands.

Reply to  hunter
May 31, 2017 9:28 am

The skeptic lobby should go for the total withdrawal from the UN Climate Protocol.
Are they ready?
I doubt it.

Reply to  hunter
May 31, 2017 12:16 pm

Sadly Trump is likely to show quarter when none is deserved for Greenshirt extremism. It’s been a solid pragmatic economics case against Paris.
Meanwhile his opposition is usurping the election result. When the full blowback comes he’ll be trying to catch-up in the media war. The greens aren’t just wrong they’re evil and there is a solid block who support maximum political vilification of the Climate cabal.
DeVos should purge all climate propaganda and fraud activists from government educational locations and materials.
Still no sign of the skeptic science swat teams either.
We know how “we’ll all get along” with climate radicals and communists ends. So DJT’s opponents are playing for blood while the President is playing the moderate with them. A mistake.

TeeWee
May 31, 2017 8:14 am

Let us hope this is true.

May 31, 2017 8:16 am

YES!

Paul Westhaver
May 31, 2017 8:26 am

Got my party hat on. Just waiting for the official news, then I toss the confetti.
Hey Michael-the-nature-trick-liar Mann, it is getting to the point where I really don’t care if I see your falsified data anymore. In the words of Trump, I am beginning to get tired of winning all the time.
Schadenfreude^2.

Michael C. Roberts
May 31, 2017 8:28 am

An opinion – Lending political credence to this ‘accord’ by sending it to the US Congress for debate, is probably not the right course of action for our beloved POTUS, DJT. From what I have been able to determine (and I stand ready to learn from you all if my conclusions are off target), the Paris Agreement signed by He Who Shall Not Be Named was an adjunct/extension of the Kyoto Protocol – and in that previous administrations’ minds therefore not required to be submitted to congress for further US ratification for the US of A to conform to its’ content.
It is the fruit that should not be picked by sending to congress, but starved of vitality and allowed to die on the vine. And the raisin resulting from that withering should not be fit for any other purpose except to be discarded into the midden heap of a sad history.
And – let the petulant left watermelons stomp their feet, scream at the top of their collective (pun intended) lungs, and cry for their now-out-of-reach Utopias. Elections really do have consequences, and I praise Deity-of-choice everyday that we elected President Trump.
Sir – Keep up the work we hired you to do!!
Regards,
MCR

Wharfplank
May 31, 2017 8:38 am

I wonder how much Venezuela was slated to get?

TA
May 31, 2017 8:49 am

We are going to get to learn more about human psychology in the near future. The people on the alamists side see themselves losing money, prestige, jobs, and some of them think CO2 is going to kill them soon if something isn’t done to curtail it. So we are going to get lots of reactions as soon as it is official. Psychopathy on display

Mickey Reno
May 31, 2017 8:59 am

Oh please, oh please, oh PLEASE announce the USA’s exit from the UNFCCC! That would be the very best way to handle all of this, I think. Imagine, no more funding from the US for the IPCC, no US bureaucrats participating in the IPCC (some of them might participate on their own time and their own dime, if the want. I’m fine with that.), no more paid travel for them to attend COP meetings in the world’s most beautiful and exotic locations. Oh, how sweet that would be. No more American funding could very well be the death knell for the IPCC and would drive at least a few nails in the coffin of it’s alarmist, CO2 based agenda.

Reply to  Mickey Reno
May 31, 2017 9:26 am

One year exit to UNFCCC. By article 25, also automatically an exit from Paris at same time as a subsidiary agreement. And by a US law passed in 1994, US is prohibited from financial support to UNFCCC or any of its ancillary activities (Green Climate Fund, IPCC) because UNFCCC recognized Palestine as a member state in April 2016. My guess is Pruitt will figure this out.

May 31, 2017 9:06 am

Trump will reportedly do handstands on the moon.
Doesn’t mean a thing. Just dog-whistles to keep the faithful in line.
Look closely at what else he is doing at this time. There will be something.

bw
May 31, 2017 9:19 am

CO2 is good. Cue photos of growing grain crops, thanksgiving meals, green trees. We write songs about amber waves of grain. The basic molecule of all life on Earth is CO2.
Anyone who claims CO2 is bad is the real villain. Eg. the United Nations is full of politicians and bureaucratic lawyers. Those people are bad. See photos of Al Gore, Stalin, bottles of poison, etc.
It’s a matter of life or death. CO2 is life.

May 31, 2017 9:37 am

It also makes the U.S. an outlier among the world’s nations…” Given the state of the world’s nations, outlier status can only be a good thing. I look forward to the US graduating to full rogue status.

R.S. Brown
Reply to  Pat Frank
May 31, 2017 2:40 pm

Pat,
I foresee an attempt to have the World Court rule that the United States
refraining from participating in the Paris Accords gives us an “unfair”
economic advantage in the prices of the goods we make available for
export.
They’ll call it a form of fiscal subsidy and an underhanded tariff on
foreign goods offered to US markets.
The fines they” try to impose on us will be astronomical !

Reply to  R.S. Brown
May 31, 2017 4:10 pm

Should that happen, RS, I’d look forward to Trump pulling Andrew Jackson’s move. They have their ruling — now let’s see them enforce it.

pameladragon
May 31, 2017 9:38 am

How many of the vast number of nations remaining in the accord actually toss money in the pot vs. how many come to the table with their hands out? With the US out, the pot will be greatly reduced….
PMK

William Astley
May 31, 2017 9:38 am

It will be interesting to see how the US leaves the Paris accord.
It is obvious the Paris accord is a bad deal for the US and for the other developed countries.
1.There is no CAGW or AGW problem to solve. Observations and analysis does not support CAGW or AGW.
2.The forced spending on green scams will have no significant impact on CO2 emissions and will cripple the US economy.
How much will the Paris accord cost the US? Should be similar costs for the other developed countries.
Odd the media completely, totally, weirdly ignored the cost and negative impact of the Paris accord on the US and the other developed countries.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/29/opinions/withdraw-paris-accord-opinion-cruz/

According to a recent National Economic Research Associates Economic Consulting study, the Paris Agreement could obliterate $3 trillion of GDP, 6.5 million industrial sector jobs and $7,000 in per capita household income from the American economy by 2040.
Meeting the 2025 emissions reduction target alone could subtract $250 billion from our GDP and eliminate 2.7 million jobs. The cement, iron and steel, and petroleum refining industries could see their production cut by 21% 19%, and 11% respectively.
Not only would these unfair standards reduce American job growth and wages and increase monthly utility costs for hardworking families, they would fundamentally disadvantage the United States in the global economy. The result: our economic output would lag while other countries continued to expand their GDPs.
In return for crippling our economy, the Paris Agreement would do next to nothing to impact global temperatures.
Under the EPA’s own models (William: EPA’s models are based on IPCC Models which ridiculously amplify the impact of CO2 on temperature), if all carbon emissions in America were basically eliminated, global temperatures would only decrease by less than two-tenths of a degree Celsius.

The US has a massive deficit and hence cannot waste more money on green scams that do not work.

And by the time he leaves office, President Obama will have added more to our national debt that all the other presidents before him combined. When President Obama finally leaves office, the national debt will be almost $20 trillion. Prior to taking office, the man who has tacked on $9.3 trillion to what our children and grandchildren owe once said the then $9 trillion national debt was “unpatriotic.”

…. The estimated cost of regulations under Obama is a staggering $873 billion. That includes a shocking $344 billion cost in Environmental Protection Agency regulations alone. All told, the number of new regulations that been finalized under President Obama checks in at almost 3,000.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/endangermentcommentsv7b1.pdf

(EPA written internal report, suppressed)
“Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act”
“I have become increasingly concerned that EPA has itself paid too little attention to the science of global warming. EPA and others have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups, particularly the IPCC and the CCSP, as being correct without a careful and critical examination of their conclusions and documentation. If they should be found to be incorrect at a later date, however, and EPA is found not to have made a really careful independent review of them before reaching its decisions on endangerment, it appears likely that it is EPA rather than these other groups that may be blamed for any errors. Restricting the source of inputs into the process to these two sources may make EPA’s current task easier but it may come with enormous costs later if they should result in policies that may not be scientifically supportable.
The failings are listed below in decreasing order of importance in my view: (See attached for details.)
1. Lack of observed upper tropospheric heating in the tropics (see Section 2.9 for a detailed discussion).
2. Lack of observed constant humidity levels, a very important assumption of all the IPCC models, as CO2levels have risen (see Section 1.7).
3. The most reliable sets of global temperature data we have, using satellite microwave sounding units, show no appreciable temperature increases during the critical period 1978-1997, just when the surface station data show a pronounced rise (see Section 2.4). Satellite data after 1998 is also inconsistent with the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis 2009 v
4. The models used by the IPCC do not take into account or show the most important ocean oscillations which clearly do affect global temperatures, namely, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and the ENSO (Section 2.4). Leaving out any major potential causes for global warming from the analysis results in the likely misattribution of the effects of these oscillations to the GHGs/CO2 and hence is likely to overstate their importance as a cause for climate change.

Resourceguy
May 31, 2017 10:01 am

I’m taking at least two long driving vacations this year to celebrate. It’s okay to spend money again. The all clear signals are coming from DC now, if slowly.

heysuess
May 31, 2017 10:08 am

This decision by President Trump speaks to the kind of gutsy leadership we’ve sorely missed. And you know what? This decision could be the beginning of the end of the whole house of cards the other world leaders have carefully built and/or cowed to. Leadership – great leadership – will find a following, and we will soon see the weaseling begin as they try to join ‘the outlier’. This is monumental. A tipping point, if you will.