Donald Trump has alarmed the world with his withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement on Global Warming, but can the US successfully profit from its non-compliance with international heat emission caps? Or, is this formal ‘withdrawal’ a Republican Party stunt that seeks to retain Trump’s special vote bank of low-brow nationalists by this nationalist unilateralism but will, in actual economic policy, not push green non-compliance too far?
The world is reverberating with the shock and alarm over last Thursday’s announcement by US President Donald Trump that his country – world’s second biggest polluter - is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on Global Warming binds all countries to best practices to save the world’s environment for human survival. So much so that North Korea’s 17th test launch of a ballistic rocket and a massive suicide bombing in the heart of Kabul were side shows.
Two other side shows last week, the 21st International Economic Summit hosted by Russia in St. Petersburg and, the EU summit with China, did get more news media play because both were seen as platforms for significant re-alignments in geo-politics following Washington’s increasing abdication of super-power supremacy.
Last Thursday the American President made a special public announcement from the White House that the US was formally withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. He did this even as a chorus of voices, from global political leaders to American political and business leaders, pleaded the US President not to carry out his election promise.
The Paris Agreement, or ‘Paris climate accord’, is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with the serious global problem of the heating up of the Earth’s atmosphere by heat production and gas emissions caused by industry, automotive transport and fossil fuel energy production. The destruction of the forests that contribute toward rainfall, soil retention and clean air is also a contributor towards what is now termed ‘global warming’.
The UN’s ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992, first committed the world’s nations to the formulation of this global accord under an overall UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The final agreement was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries in weeks-long, tortuous, negotiations at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and adopted by consensus on 12 December 2015.
As of June 2017, 195 UNFCCC member countries – Sri Lanka included - have signed the agreement, 148 of which have ratified it, according to UNFCCC sources.
In the Paris Agreement, each country determines its own contribution it should make in order to mitigate global warming. There is no mechanism to force a country to set a specific target by a specific date.
For decades before the Rio Earth Summit, the world’s scientific community had been largely unanimous in warning of the rise in the Earth’s atmospheric temperature and creeping signs of its disastrous impact on humanity’s earthly home. They are pointing to a rise in temperature in the Earth’s atmosphere due to various effects caused by massive heat and gas emissions across the world since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century.
The rise in Earth temperature has been so significant that, in the past decades since its detection, already the world’s ice cover has begun to melt - whether it is the permanent ice cover of the high mountain ranges or the glacial ice shelves of the North and South Poles. Everyone with a little knowledge of the Earth’s evolution knows of the great Ice Ages and the subsequent rise in world sea levels caused by the worldwide melting of ice at the end of the Ice Ages.
Pre-historic humanity lived through the changes in climate and geography as once-temperate lands became desert due to the then global climate change. As sea levels rose, peninsulas became islands and continents shrank.
Today, an overcrowded Earth must deal with the same mounting challenge of global warming and rise in sea levels. But the challenge is doubled by the parallel poisoning of the atmosphere by polluting gas emissions from industry and fossil fuel energy production.
It is the problem of the heat and carbon footprint of national and world economies that the Paris Agreement addresses.
The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Additionally, the agreement aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change.
It took decades of social activism and advocacy by world social and green movements, lobbying by many interested governments of countries already affected by climate change and also the rise in economic value of green friendly industry and energy producti on before the world community to arrived at the Paris consensus. As China and India actually began experiencing natural disasters caused directly by heat emissions their resistance to curbs on fossil fuel-driven industry ended dramatically.
In the recent decade, green economics has taken off big-time, no less in the US. Across the world, global capitalism has already taken green standards on board and sensitivity to carbon footprints and sustainable and eco-friendly economics is, today, good business. Except, that is, for some elements in the US coal industry who face closure, and small social segments of the coal industry labour force. These interest groups supported Donald Trump’s election and today Trump wants to theatrically fulfil his campaign promise.
In the US, however, many states and large metropolitan centres as well as whole sectors of industry and services, have already, on their own initiative, begun major shifts toward greener industry and energy use practices. The chorus of voices inside the US protesting the withdrawal from Paris included governors of the some of the biggest and most industrialised states as well as mayors of major cities. A majority of top business leaders polled last week disagreed with the US withdrawal from Paris.
Indeed, it is possible to argue that the world’s richest economy, the US, is already firmly moving away from polluting economics to green economics. The profit argument has already begun to favour green economics. Alternative and sustainable energy sources are now the future of energy economics and the US is a world leader in this.
Thus, with whole regions and vital economic sectors of the US are already in compliance with the Paris Agreement’s limits on heat and gas emissions. Many of these sectoral leaders have already gone on record last week that despite the US’ formal withdrawal from Paris, they would proceed with green friendly business and economic policy.
If the ruling Republican Party is sharp enough, they will allow their low-brow President to posture with his dramatic formal ‘withdrawal’ but will not attempt to reverse current environmental controls and industry standards that are in compliance with Paris. This is because it is actually more profitable generally, to proceed with green economics rather than to revert to old, eco-hostile production practices.
The Republican Party would, surely, have been advised by its business sector backers that China and many other powers are now forging ahead with eco-friendly industrial and transport systems and, are innovating in green energy production.
What Washington must realise, however, is that, whether fake or not, such formal actions only serve to diminish the US’ credibility and its significance on the world stage. Already, China has joined the European Union in upholding the Paris Agreement and Russia has not been far behind.
The US’ withdrawal from Paris, then, must be seen as yet further indication of the end of the age of super-powers.